We can share the women
We can share the wine
We can share what we got of yours
’Cause we done shared all of mine
Keep a-rolling
Just a mile to go
Keep on rolling, my old buddy
You’re moving much too slow
I just jumped the watchman
Right outside the fence
Took his ring, four bucks in change
Now ain’t that heaven-sent?
Hurts my ears to listen, Shannon
Burns my eyes to see
Cut down a man in cold blood, Shannon
Might as well be me
We used to play for silver
Now we play for life
One’s for sport and one’s for blood
At the point of a knife1
Now the die is shaken
Now the die must fall
There ain’t a winner in this game
Who don’t go home with all
Not with all . . .
Leaving Texas
Fourth day of July
Sun so hot, clouds so low
The eagles filled the sky
Catch the Detroit Lightning
Out of Santa Fe
Great Northern out of Cheyenne2
From sea to shining sea3
Gotta get to Tulsa
First train we can ride
Got to settle one old score
And one small point of pride . . .
Ain’t no place a man can hide, Shannon
Keep him from the sun
Ain’t no bed will give us rest, man,
You keep us on the run
Jack Straw from Wichita4
Cut his buddy down
Dug for him a shallow grave
And laid his body down
Half a mile from Tucson
By the morning light
One man gone and another to go
My old buddy, you’re moving much too slow
We can share the women
We can share the wine . . .
Words by Robert Hunter
Music by Bob Weir
A line from the Child ballad (#13) “Edward”:
What makes that blood on the point of your knife?
My son, now tell to me
It is the blood of my old gray mare
Who plowed the fields for me, me, me
Who plowed the fields for me.
It is too red for your old gray mare
My son, now tell to me
It is the blood of my old coon dog
Who chased the fox for me, me, me
Who chased the fox for me.
It is too red for your old coon dog
My son, now tell to me
It is the blood of my brother John
Who hoed the corn for me, me, me
Who hoed the corn for me.
What did you fall out about?
My son, now tell to me
Because he cut yon holly bush
Which might have been a tree, tree, tree
Which might have been a tree.
What will you say when your father comes back
When he comes home from town?
I’ll set my foot in yonder boat
And sail the ocean round, round, round
I’ll sail the ocean round.
When will you come back, my own dear son?
My son, now tell to me
When the sun it sets in yonder sycamore tree
And that will never be, be, be
And that will never be.
The ballad is noteworthy in another respect as well, namely that it is structured for two voices, as is “Jack Straw.”
The Great Northern (GN) was not a train but a large railroad, which ran from St. Paul to Portland, Oregon, Seattle, and Vancouver. The Burlington did go to Cheyenne, Wyoming, and the Great Northern and Burlington worked together. The Burlington ran GN trains from Chicago to St. Paul as well as the Northern Pacific (NP) trains. In 1970, GN, NP, and Burlington merged into Burlington Northern.
The Great Northern Railroad Company originated as the St. Paul and Pacific in 1862, becoming the ‘Great Northern’ in 1889, eleven years after the Canadian James J. Hill, “the empire builder,” took it over. (Flexner)
A quote from “America the Beautiful,” words by Katherine Lee Bates (1859–1929), first printed in the Congregationalist, July 4, 1895. Bates was a professor of English literature at Wellesley College and is said to have written the poem after visiting the summit of Pike’s Peak.
The music to which the poem was set is the tune “Materna” by Samuel A. Ward, composed in 1882. He apparently never heard his music linked with Bates’s words.
A mysterious figure dating from the Great Revolt in England of 1381, aka the Peasants’ Revolt, or Wat Tyler’s Rebellion, mentioned in Chaucer’s Nonnes Preestes Tale. The revolt, a response to heavy and frequent taxes, started in Essex at the end of May 1381, though most events were concentrated in June of that year. Jack Straw is a figure of some controversy:
Even Jack Straw, the most notable of them, is a vague figure who flits across Essex no less than Kent, and though he is mentioned, we seldom or never detect him actually at work till the entry of the rebels into London. He is probably identical with the John Rackstraw mentioned in some of the chronicles and in the judicial proceedings which followed the insurrection. (Oman)
A footnote to the above passage states:
An article, more ingenious than convincing, in the Hist. Rev. for January, 1906, by Doctor F. W. Brie, will have it that Jack Straw is no real person at all but a mere nickname of Wat Tyler. It is quite true that the Continuator of Knighton held this view, . . . and that two or three ballads and several fifteenth-century chroniclers . . . speak of Jakke Straw being killed by Walworth at Smithfield.
There is also a Jack Straw in Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Act One:
Maggie: . . . when he was just overseer here on the old Jack Straw and Peter Ochello place.
The game “pick up sticks” is sometimes referred to as “playing jack straw(s).”
From the American Heritage Dictionary:
jackstraw n. 1. Plural. A game played with a pile of straws or thin sticks, with the players attempting in turn to remove a single stick without disturbing the others. Used with a singular verb. Also called “spilikins.” 2. One of the straws or sticks used in this game. Also called spilikin. 48
Webster’s Dictionary (2nd ed.):
1. An effigy stuffed with straw; a man of straw; a man without property, worth, or influence. Milton.
2. One of a set of straws or of strips of ivory, bone, wood, etc., for playing a game, the jackstraws being thrown in a heap on a table, to be gathered up singly by a hooked instrument, without disturbing the rest of the pile; also pl., the game so played.
3. Any of several small European birds; esp., the whitethroat, the garden warbler, or the blackcap, which use bedstraw (Galium) in their nests. Local, Eng.
4. A flower spike of the common ribwort. Dial, Eng.
Recording: Europe ’72 (November 1972).
First performance: October 19, 1971, at Northrop Auditorium, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
A note on performance practice: It is worth a mention that the lead vocal of “Jack Straw” was originally sung only by Weir. It seems that Garcia and Weir actually started trading lines in the middle of the 1972 Europe tour.