Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads

<p class="tit-song">THE BOSTON BURGLAR <span class="pagenum"><SPAN id="page147" name="page147"></SPAN>(p. 147)</span></p> <p>I was born in Boston City, a city you all know well,<br/> Brought up by honest parents, the truth to you I'll tell,<br/> Brought up by honest parents and raised most tenderly,<br/> Till I became a roving man at the age of twenty-three.</p> <p>My character was taken then, and I was sent to jail.<br/> My friends they found it was in vain to get me out on bail.<br/> The jury found me guilty, the clerk he wrote it down,<br/> The judge he passed me sentence and I was sent to Charleston town.</p> <p>You ought to have seen my aged father a-pleading at the bar,<br/> Also my dear old mother a-tearing of her hair,<br/> Tearing of her old gray locks as the tears came rolling down,<br/> Saying, "Son, dear son, what have you done, that you are sent to Charleston town?"</p> <p>They put me aboard an eastbound train one cold December day,<br/> And <span class="pagenum"><SPAN id="page148" name="page148"></SPAN>(p. 148)</span> every station that we passed, I'd hear the people say,<br/> "There goes a noted burglar, in strong chains he'll be bound,&mdash;<br/> For the doing of some crime or other he is sent to Charleston town."</p> <p>There is a girl in Boston, she is a girl that I love well,<br/> And if I ever gain my liberty, along with her I'll dwell;<br/> And when I regain my liberty, bad company I will shun,<br/> Night-walking, gambling, and also drinking rum.</p> <p>Now, you who have your liberty, pray keep it if you can,<br/> And don't go around the streets at night to break the laws of man;<br/> For if you do you'll surely rue and find yourself like me,<br/> A-serving out my twenty-one years in the penitentiary.</p> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />