JIM
BLUDSO
by
Colonel John Hay & Eric Mareo ( 1905 )
performed by
Bransby Williams.
Well no! I can't tell where he lives because he don't live, you
see!
Least ways, he's got out of the habit of livin' like you and me.
Where have you been for the last three years, that you haven't heard
folks tell,
How Jimmy Bludso passed in his checks the night of the Prairie Belle?
He weren't no saint — them engineers is all pretty much alike;
One wife in Natchez-under-the-Hill and another one here in Pike.
A keerless man in his talk, was Jim, and an awkward man in a row,
But he never funked and never lied, I reckon he never knowed how;
And this was all the religion he had to treat his engines well;
Never be passed on the river: to mind the Pilot's bell:
And if ever the Prairie Belle took fire a thousand times he swore,
He'd hold her nozzle agin the bank till the last soul got ashore.
All boats has their day on the Missisip and her day came at last.
The Movastor was a better boat, but the Belle she wouldn't be passed.
And so come tearin' along that night the oldest craft on on the
line
With a nigger squat on her safety valve, and her furnace crammed,
resin and pine.
The fire burst out as she cleared the bar and burnt a hole in the
night,
But quick as a flash she turned and made for that willowbank on
the right
There was runnin' and cursin', but Jim yelled out over all the infernal
roar.
'I'll hold her nozzle agin the bank till the last galoot's ashore!'
Through! the hot black breath or the burning boat, Jim Bludso's
voice was heard
And they all had faith in his cussedness, and knowed he would keep
his word.
Sure as you're born they all got off, afore the smokestack fell.
And Bludso's ghost went up alone in the smoke of the Prairie Belle.
He weren't no saint, but at judgement I'd run my chance with Jim:
Longside of some pious gentlemen, that wouldn't shook hands with
him
He'd seen his duty a deadsure thing and went for it there and then:
And Christ ain't goin' to be too hard, on a man that died for men.
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