Sam And His Fiddle

His fiddle was only a home-made affair,

Fashioned right out of a hemlock chunk;

His bow he pulled out of the tail of his mare,

So it had the most natural spunk.

His fiddle warn’t polished like some that you see,

     The model I reason a kind of its own;

But no one who heard it could help but agree

     That it had a most beautiful tone.

When Sam got a-hold of the bow you can bet,

     (He never could let his old fiddle alone)

He could draw out a tune that could make your eyes wet,

     He could draw out a most beautiful tone.

Ol’ Sam hadn’t studied his music abroad

     Never’d heard no playin’ outside of his town;

He couldn’t have told you the name of a chord.

     Or whether crescendo went upwards of down.

He couldn’t read music, in fact never tried,

     Was allus too busy with playin’, he said;

Jest put all the questions of techn aside

     An’ played from his heart not his head.

He ‘lowed that to study would hamper his gait,

     An’ so he kept sawing long years all alone;

An’ people flocked round from over the state,

     To hear him draw out sech a beautiful tone.

Sam wasn’t much good in a business way,

     Some called him a loafer which wasn’t quite true;

He was kind an’ considerate, an’ played ev’ry day,

     Or oft’ner if anyone wanted him to.

At social or party he allus come round

     An’ played for his supper but never for more,

An’ when he’d start playin’ a silence profound

     Pervaded the parlor an’ every floor.

Ol’ Sam he bent over, an’ just drew his bow,

     An’ heaven jest out of his wrinkled face shown;

He lifted the souls of the high and the low

     By the grace of his wonderful tone.

When Sam goes too Heaven, he’ll go there, I say,

     For mortal never was more worthy than he,

They’ll want him to play on a harp right away,

     To which I am sure he’ll never agree.

If he could jest take his ol’ fiddle along,

     To play up above in the Heavenly street,

I satin the hull of the Heavenly throng

     Would leave all the others and be at his feet.

An’ then as for me, an’ the rest of us, too,

     We know ‘twould be joy at the Heavenly throne,

If we could have Sam on the gold avenue

     Continue to play in his wonderful tone.

May 3, ‘09