Uploaded August 2020 | Updated September 2026, 6 days ago
Day 155 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series
Sandburg writes: "How many lies will a free young man tell a young lady? As many as the cross-ties on the rail-road or as many as the stars in the sky. He will lie and lie. His lies are endless. Thus the cast-off woman speaks of him. She wants a mountain cabin. She wants to be so far away that she won't bother her friends, the blackbirds. She sings it slowly. There is time for deliberation. Yet a phrase now and then, shaded with hate or pity, comes swiftly, almost gutturally and as a threat. The song came to me from a Dallas, Texas, woman who got it from Tennessee folks."
There are several phrases from other songs that have found their way into this song. As the Traditional Ballad Index says, "This appears to be another of those collections of floating verses that has taken on some life of its own."
Day 155 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series
Sandburg writes: "How many lies will a free young man tell a young lady? As many as the cross-ties on the rail-road or as many as the stars in the sky. He will lie and lie. His lies are endless. Thus the cast-off woman speaks of him. She wants a mountain cabin. She wants to be so far away that she won't bother her friends, the blackbirds. She sings it slowly. There is time for deliberation. Yet a phrase now and then, shaded with hate or pity, comes swiftly, almost gutturally and as a threat. The song came to me from a Dallas, Texas, woman who got it from Tennessee folks."
There are several phrases from other songs that have found their way into this song. As the Traditional Ballad Index says, "This appears to be another of those collections of floating verses that has taken on some life of its own."
