Old Bill Miner

Key of G

Verse

Way down in old Kentucky boys on one winter’s morn
In eighteen forty-seven Old Bill Miner was born
But nothing ever suited Bill at least that’s what they say
And at the age of thirteen years one night he ran away
From ranch to California ranch he did his life enjoy
When asked his occupation there he would reply cowboy
With a rocky mountain highway man Bill LeRoy some say
They robbed until LeRoy was hung and old Bill got away
In Turkey and in London ‘twas there he could be free
A desert raider a slave trader he soon became you see
Running guns in Rio and South Americae
Then robbing trains in the diamond fields of old North Africae
Hands up boys hold them steady the usual command
From old Bill Miner the gentleman bandit a six gun in his hand
Robbing trains all his life he would often say
Ain’t no jail that can hold me I’ll surely get away
Oh I’ll surely get away
Back home in California he robbed the Sonora state
San Quentin prison and twenty years brought him the middle age
And they let him out for being good in nineteen hundred one
The twentieth century was young he bought himself a gun
Upon that mainline CPR he stopped the fast mail train
Got a life in New Westminster Bin in the ol’ Victoria rain
But Bill was good to his word and knew what he was about
Thirty-five feet of tunnel in nineteen seven he dug out

Verse

Head wide so? for Georgia in a manner grand and slow
He robbed the southern rail express his hair was white as snow
Caught by W.A. Minster that persistent Pinkerton man
Tell me now just who you are was his gruff command
I am G.W.Edwards a-standing in the mud
George Anderson William Miner or maybe old Bill Mud
Bill broke out of the Georgia bin in the swampy waist-deep water
They hunted him down with dogs and guns for three miles and a quarter
And way down south in Milledgeville no hope for a pardon
Old Bill tended to the flowers in the penitentiary garden
But sometimes old memories are all that we can keep
And two years later to the day old Bill died in his sleep