Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie

Song lyrics to Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie, the famous cowboy ballad

First published in 1910, Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie is also known as “The Cowboy’s Lament”, “The Dying Cowboy”, “Bury Me Out on the Lone Prairie”, and “Oh, Bury Me Not”

Lyrics

“O bury me not on the lone prairie.”
These words came low and mournfully
From the pallid lips of the youth who lay
On his dying bed at the close of day.

He had wasted and pined ’til o’er his brow
Death’s shades were slowly gathering now
He thought of home and loved ones nigh,
As the cowboys gathered to see him die.

“O bury me not on the lone prairie
Where coyotes howl and the wind blows free
In a narrow grave just six by three—
O bury me not on the lone prairie”

“It matters not, I’ve been told,
Where the body lies when the heart grows cold
Yet grant, o grant, this wish to me
O bury me not on the lone prairie.”

“I’ve always wished to be laid when I died
In a little churchyard on the green hillside
By my father’s grave, there let me be,
O bury me not on the lone prairie.”

“I wish to lie where a mother’s prayer
And a sister’s tear will mingle there.
Where friends can come and weep o’er me.
O bury me not on the lone prairie.”

“For there’s another whose tears will shed.
For the one who lies in a prairie bed.
It breaks me heart to think of her now,
She has curled these locks, she has kissed this brow.”

“O bury me not…” And his voice failed there.
But they took no heed to his dying prayer.
In a narrow grave, just six by three
They buried him there on the lone prairie.

And the cowboys now as they roam the plain,
For they marked the spot where his bones were lain,
Fling a handful o’ roses o’er his grave
With a prayer to God his soul to save.

Recorded By

• virtually every cowboy & western artist, including (but not limited to):
• Johnny Cash
• Burl Ives
• Tex Ritter
• Roy Rogers

Media performances

• Stagecoach (1939)
• In the final episode of The Munsters, Lily Munster plays the organ while she, Hermann, and Grandpa sing “Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie,” after which she says “It’s nice to get together and sing those old, fun songs.”
• Bugs Bunny sings the line “bury me not on the lone prairie” in at least four Warner Brothers animated shorts: 1942’s The Wacky Wabbit (while shoveling dirt into a hole Elmer Fudd has just fallen into); 1945’s Hare Trigger (after Yosemite Sam falls down as if dead); 1980’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Bunny; and 1992’s Invasion of the Bunny Snatchers.
• Woody Woodpecker also sings the song at the beginning of 1948’s Wild & Woody!.
• A version of this song was used in the video game Red Dead Redemption, sung by William Elliott Whitmore.