BALLAD OF MAD ANN BAILEY

Mad Ann, from the streets of London Town
Rides in a wamus shirt
And britches made of a red buck's skin
Instead of a linsey skirt.

Her coon tail cap is ringed with dust,
Her horses flanks shine wet,
And the rowelled wounds in his black side sting
With the salty grime of sweat.

Her screams are cut with a cockney blur
But she gives the white alarm,
And she carries a flint lock rifle primed
In the crook of her muscled arm.

The scalps in her belt outfly the wind,
And the gavels whirl to flame.
Death! Death! To the copper-skinned....
Plague on the Shawnee name!

She curses the race who killed her man,
With oaths from an English slum.
She swears by the god of the border folk
And swigs from her jug of rum.

She rides into legend across the night,
A shape no arrow can harm
A Sprit watches the crazy ones
And toughens her skin with charm.

She swerves on the coiling Greenbrier trace,
Crosses the blue Divide,
And follows the narrow bison trail
On the Gauley's western side.

Like a driven thing, like an hant gone mad,
Lost in a savage spell,
She rides ahead of the painted fiends
With her leather bent for hell.

Ann, from the streets of London Town
Carries the word alone,
Whoops through the borderland tonight
Spurring her Spanish roan.

Mad Ann, from the streets of London Town
Wakens the borderland,
Rides with her powder horn slung low
And a finger crooked on her trigger hand.