FOLK COLLECTION 11: The Skaggs Foundation Cowboy Poetry Collection
Folk Coll 11 is Utah State University's cowboy poetry collection. The collection, originally created
by a generation donation by the L. J. and Mary Skaggs Foundation, includes books gathered
during a fieldwork project in the early 1980s to document cowboy poetry in the U.S. west (see Folk
Coll 11f). From this important fieldwork project came the impetus for the first Cowboy Poetry Gathering held in
January 1985 in Elko, Nevada. Since that time, each January, the Fife Folklore Archives staff take the collection
and Access database (that details each book, poem, author, first line and key words), to the National Cowboy Poetry
Gathering for offsite use. Through University purchases and generation donations from poets and collectors, this collection continues to grow.
Book Title
Composer
Call #
Pages
Author
Poem Title
First Lines
Keywords
Reflections of the West: Cowboy painters and poets
C.J. Hadley
FC 11 H-59
151
Elizabeth Ebert
The Last Great Rabbit Hunt
Back when we first were married we were short of cash, and so we decided we'd hunt rabbits, Just to make some extra dough.
celebration, macho, hero, sissy, humor
The Columbine Remembers
Anna Bowie May
FC 11 M-26
80
Frances May
Memorial to Dorothy
Take my hand, little sister
The Columbine Remembers
Anna Bowie May
FC 11 M-26
72
Frances Wheeler
After Christmas
As I folded the tinsel and wrapped the cr?che
Poems, Facts and Fiction
FC 11 O-03
58
Harold Otto
Pateros School 1983
As we gather here this evening we have seen a dream come true.
The Columbine Remembers
Anna Bowie May
FC 11 M-26
66
Anna May
Business
If we have any business
Where Cattle Roam
FC 11 S-15
97
Al Summers
Back to the Old Double S
I get mighty restless 'bout this time a-year
The Sunlight Kid and Other Western Verses
FC 11 S-09
116
Lawrence B. Smith
Back Home
How comes it, guy, since you left the East
Muses Of The Ranges
FC 11 D-28
32
John C. Dofflemyer
Partners
They had ridden trails together, they had rode off on their own, they had shaped the sides of leather thet the miles of trails had shone;
everlasting, memories, aspire, ages
Wrong Time Wrong Place
FC 11 F-21
24
Ed Fields
Spandex Buckaroo
Got to tell you a story, that's not short or sweet About a cowboy whose stomach, got to shadin out his feet.
Saddle Songs: A Cowboy Songbag
FC 11 E-19
93
Don Edwards
Song; Hard Times
Graining the Mare: The Poetry of Ranch Women
Teresa Jordan
FC 11 J-10
56
Gretel Ehrlich
Born in the Afternoon
Against barbed wire an antelope.
Poetry of Ranch Women
Poems of American Cowboys & Nature
FC 11 C-04
45
Bob A. Carson
Ramble About Me
Ramble about me, high winds of Autumn.
Never Walk When You Can Ride
FC 11 M-34
Mike McFarland
not poetry
Rhymes Along the Way
FC 11 L-39
31
Robert L. Laumeyer
Man's Excuses
If he doesn't want to, he will not find time to do the "fixer ups" or to write a rhyme. A man's excuses are very complex one he doesn't use is there's not time for sex.
Alaska-Yukon Favorites
FOLK COLL 11 S-78
8
Robert W. Service
The Cremation of Sam McGee
There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men for moil for gold; The Arctic trails have their secret tales that would make your blood run cold;
yarn spinning, cremation, death
Along Old Trails: Poems of New Mexico and Arizona
FC 11 S-06
24
William Haskell Simpson
Siesta
You of the wrinkled faces,
Open Range: Poetry of the Reimagined West
Laurie Wagner Buyer & WC Jameson
FC 11 W-30
37
When the Sodergreen House Burned Down
Unlike modern houses framed with concrete and glass, This house was hewn from heartwood with a meaning to its past, When strong men worked with gnarled hands and double-bitted ax To knit the logs together, dove-tailed, and made to really last.
Still Rhymin' on the Range
Mike Puhallo, Wendy Liddle & Brian Brannon
FC 11 P-25
42
Brian Brannon
Goofy
Goofy's a horse that I ride at Yohetta.
Vientos de las Sierras (Winds of the Mountains): Poems of New Mexico
FC 11 B-07
31
S. Omar Barker
Crepuscule
If I had not seen the sun when it rose.
love, tenderness, first love, young love, new love, eyes
Best Loved Poems of the American West
John J. and Barbara T. Gregg
FC 11 G-09
398
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Revenge of Rain-in-the-Face
In that desolate land and lone.
Big Horn, Yellowstone, Sioux, grief, despair, Indian village, war paint, Sitting Bull, White Chief, yellow hair
Rhymes o' a Driftin' Cowboy
FC 11 H-01
113
Chuck Haas
A Top Hand
Man...if yu pack a yearn' t' be a cowboy.
work
The Broncho Book
FC 11 C-13
96
Captain Jack Crawford
A Message from the Dead
We were playmates.
sin, cigarettes, temperance, clean living
West Word Ho! The western poetry of Doris Daley
FC 11 D-23
70
Doris Daley
Goodnight to the Trail
Come with me to a place out west Where all who trod are Nature's guest We'll ride to the top of a piney crest And gaze at the valley below.
Lyrics of the Lariat
FC 11 G-10
24
Nathan Kirk Griggs
Ben
As many boys have longed to do, and many boy shave done.
boy, youth, teenager, west, drink, alcohol, gin, mother
A Roundup of cowboy humor
Ted Stone
FC 11 S-66
102
Charles M. Russell
prose