Bury Me Not On The Lone Prairie

(a.k.a. "A Cowboy's Lament")

Words & Music:

Oscar J. Fox

(Tabber:  unknown)

 

This song is actually entitled "A Cowboy's Lament", but no one knows it by that name.

 

G   G6      Em  Em7    Em/G    G

"Oh bury me not on the lone prairie"

G     G6         Em  Em7 Em      Em4   G

These words came low and mourn - ful - ly

G               G(5)      G         GM7

From the pallid lips of a youth who lay

G            Em         Em7      G

On his dying bed at the close of day.

 

Note: The altered chords are my own addition. I tried to flesh out the

melody line with them. You can play a simpler version with only G and Em.

Here's how I play the chords. Each line is a separate fret and the numbers

are suggested fingerings. Colons mean not to play a string.

G       G6      Em      Em7     Em/G    Em4     G(5)    GM7=Gmaj7

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|1||||  |:1|||  |23|||  |23|||  |23|||  ||3|||  |1||||  |2|||1

2||||3  2:|||3          ||||4|  4|||||          2|||34  3|||||

 

Additional verses:

He has wasted and pined 'til o'er his brow.  Death's shades were slowly gathering now.

He thought of home and loved ones nigh, and the cowboys gathered to see him die.

 

"Oh bury me not on the lone prairie, where the coyotes howl and the wind blows free.

In a narrow grave just six by three.  Oh bury me not on the lone prairie."

 

"It matters not, I've oft been told, where the body lies when the heart grows cold.

Yet grant, oh grant, this wish to me:  oh bury me not on the lone prairie."

 

"I've always wished to be laid when I died in a little churchyard on a green hillside.

By my father's grave there let me be.  Oh bury me not on the lone prairie."

 

"I wish to lie where a mother's prayer and a sister's tear will mingle there.

Where friends can come and weep o'er me.  Oh bury me not on the lone prairie."

 

"For there's another whose tears will shed.  For the one who lies in a prairie bed.

It breaks my heart to think of her now,  She has curled these locks; she has kissed this brow."

 

"Oh bury me not..." And his voice failed there, but they took no heed to his dying prayer.

In a narrow grave, just six by three, they buried him there on the lone prairie.

 

And the cowboys now as they roam the plain for they marked the spot where his bones were lain,

Fling a handful of roses o'er his grave with a prayer to God, his soul to save.

 

 

The provenance of the attached easy arrangement of this is unknown.  It is part of a collection that people gave me over the years.  Please inform me if correctly attribute it.