Digital Tradition Mirror

I've Got No Use for the Women

(This score available as ABC, SongWright, PostScript, PNG, or PMW, or a MIDI file)
Pennywhistle notation and Dulcimer tab for this song is also available

I've Got No Use for the Women

Now, I've got no use for the women;
A true one can seldom be found,
They use a man for his money,
When it's gone, they'll turn him down.
They're all alike at the bottom,
Selfish and grasping for all.
They'll stay by a man when he's winning
And laugh in his face at a fall.

My pal was an honest young puncher;
Honest and upright and true.
But he turned to a hard-shooting gunman,
On account of a girl named Lou.
He fell in with evil companions,
The kind that are better off dead;
When a gambler insulted her picture,
He filled him full of lead.

All through the long night they trailed him,
Through mesquite and thick chaparral.
And I couldn't help think of that woman
As I saw him pitch and fall;
If she'd been the pal that she should have,
He might have been raising a son,
Instead of out there on the prairie,
To die by the ranger's gun.

Death's sharp sting did not trouble,
His chances for life were too slim,
But where they were putting the body
Was all that worried him.
He lifted his head on his elbow;
The blood from his wounds flowed red.
He gazed at his pals grouped around him,
As he whispered to them and said:

"Oh bury me out on the prairie,
Where the coyotes may howl o'er my grave.
Bury me out on the prairie,
But from them my bones please save.
Wrap me up in my blankets,
And bury me deep in the ground.
Cover me over with boulders
Of granite gray and round."

So we buried him out on the prairie,
Where the coyotes can howl o'er his grave,
And his soul is now a-resting,
from the unkind cut she gave;
And many another young puncher
As he rides past that pile of stone,
Recalls some similar woman
And thinks of his moldering bones.

Recorded by Burl Ives and (I think) Tex Ritter
RG

Thanks to Mudcat for the Digital Tradition!