An excerpt from Alfred Edward Housman (1859 – 1936)’s great work
A Shropshire Lad, published in 1896:
I was born in Dixie in a boomer shack,
Just a little shanty by the railroad track.
The humming of the drivers was my lullaby
And a freight train whistle taught me how to cry.
I got the freight train blues,
Lawdy, Lawdy, Lawdy,
Got them in the bottom of my ramblin' shoes,
And when the whistle blows, I gotta go.
Oh! Lawdy! Guess I'm never gonna lose
The freight train blues.
My daddy was a fireman and my mammy dear
Was the only daughter of an engineer.
My sweetie is a brakeman, and it ain't no joke,
It's a shame the way she keeps a good man broke.