Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads

DEDICATION To MR. THEODORE ROOSEVELT WHO WHILE PRESIDENT WAS NOT TOO BUSY TO TURN ASIDE—CHEERFULLY AND EFFECTIVELY—AND AID WORKERS IN THE FIELD OF AMERICAN BALLADRY, THIS VOLUME IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED Cheyenne Aug 28th 1910 Dear Mr. Lomax, You have done a work emphatically worth doing and one which should appeal to the people of all our country, but particularly to the people of the west and southwest. Your subject is not only exceedingly interesting to the student of literature, but also to the student of the general history of the west. There is something very curious in the reproduction here on this new continent of essentially the conditions of ballad-growth which obtained in mediæval England; including, by the way, sympathy for the outlaw, Jesse James taking the place of Robin Hood. Under modern conditions however, the native ballad is speedily killed by competition with the music hall songs; the cowboys becoming ashamed to sing the crude homespun ballads in view of what Owen Writes calls the "ill-smelling saloon cleverness" of the far less interesting compositions of the music-hall singers. It is therefore a work of real importance to preserve permanently this unwritten ballad literature of the back country and the frontier. With all good wishes, I am very truly yours Theodore Roosevelt