Other than his Christmas Carols, I was most familiar with the Burl Ives from his parody in
"Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy" from Ren & Stimpy. It included the thoroughly non-Ives non-sequitor line in the song "I told you I'd shoot, but you didn't believe me. Why didn't you believe me?" It wasn't until much later that I found out that Ives gave almost that exact line (after shooting someone) in
The Big Country.
The line was after shooting his son, played by Chuck Connors, in an all time great movie, The Big Country.