Zebra Dun

"Zebra Dun" is a traditional American cowboy song dating from at least 1890. Jack Thorp says he collected it from Randolph Reynolds at Carrizzozo Flats in that year. The song tells of a stranger who happened into a cowboy camp at the head of the Cimarron River. When he asks to borrow a "fat saddle horse", the cowboys fix him up:

Now old Dunny was an outlaw, he'd grown so awful wild

He could paw the moon down, he could jump a mile;

Old Dunny stood right still there, like as he didn't know

Till the stranger had him saddled and ready for to go.

When the stranger hit the saddle, then old Dun he quit the earth,

And started travelin' upwards for all that he was worth,

A-yellin' and a-squealin' and a-having wall-eyed fits

His front feet perpendicular, his hind feet in the bits.

This was one of the songs John Lomax took from Thorp and published without attribution in his own book a few years later (see Cowboy songs and Other Frontier Ballads, page 154)

"Zebra Dun" was one of the most popular songs among the cowboys and is included in many song books. The singing cowboy, Jules Allen, was the first to record it (Victor V-40022, 1928).