I Ride an Old Paint

I Ride an Old Paint is a traditional American cowboy song, collected and published in 1927 by Carl Sandburg in his American Songbag.[1][2]

A Paint horse

Traveling the American Southwest, Sandburg found the song through western poets Margaret Larkin and Linn Riggs. He wrote that the song came to them in Santa Fe from a cowboy who was last heard of as heading for the Mexican border with friends. He described the song as one of a man in harmony with the values of the American West: "There is rich poetry in the image of the rider so loving a horse he begs when he dies his bones shall be tied to his horse and the two of them sent wandering with their faces turned west."[1]

Members of the Western Writers of America chose it as one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time.[3] The song is interpolated in Aaron Copland's ballet Rodeo, in William Grant Still's Miniatures and in Virgil Thomson's film score for The Plow that Broke the Plains.

There is disagreement among experts about the meanings of some terms in the song, namely: "snuffy", "fiery", "Dan", and "hoolihan".[4] If the word is dam as in Linda Ronstadt's version it is a mother horse. The hoolihan is a backhand loop thrown with a lariat, typically thrown to catch horses. Notable recordings of "I Ride an Old Paint" are by the Weavers and Linda Ronstadt. Loudon Wainwright III has a particularly plaintive version he titled simply "Old Paint" on his 1971 Album II (Loudon Wainwright III album). Johnny Cash recorded a version on his 1965 album Johnny Cash Sings the Ballads of the True West and Canadian singer Colter Wall recorded a version on his 2020 album Western Swing & Waltzes and Other Punchy Songs.

References
  1. McNamara, Tom (2012-08-25). "Carl Sandburg—The American Songbag: I Ride an Old Paint". American Masters. WNET. Retrieved 2014-07-06.
  2. Sandburg, Carl (1927). The American Songbag. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company. p. 12. Retrieved 2014-07-06.
  3. Western Writers of America (2010). "The Top 100 Western Songs". American Cowboy. Archived from the original on 19 October 2010.
  4. "Who Knows?". Cowboy Poetry at the Bar-D Ranch. cowboypoetry.com. Archived from the original on 2010-11-05. Retrieved 2014-07-06.

Ken Kesey suggested that "Houlihan" is a synonym for "Maverick". Meaning: Wild... Untamed.

This would be in his famous essay "The Day After Superman Died". Wherein he refers to wild man Neil Cassidy (AKA Dean Moriarity) as... O'Houlihan.

Moreover, the Lyrics of the song itself, actually suggest the wild cattle, ARE The Houlihan.

Fiery and Snuffy, are the Fire and the Branding Iron. By which, those purportedly wild cattle, become your cattle.

Standard Lyrics are in the Public Domain.

I ride an old paint I lead an old dan I'm going to Montana To throw the houlihan They feed in the coolies They water in the draw Their tails are all matted Their backs are all raw Ride around Ride around real slow The fiery and the snuffy are raring to go

Carl Sandberg published lyrics in 1927, but the song may actually be as much as 80 years older.

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