Tiger Whitehead

Wild blackberries blooming in the thickest on the mountain
Sheep shire and watercress are growing round the fountain
Where a big black bear is drinking, lappin' water like a dog
Tiger Whitehead’s in the bed sleeping like a log
But tomorrow he’ll see bear tracks seven inches wide
And by sundown he’ll be bringing in the hide
Pretty Sally Garland coming down the mountainside
Where Tiger Whitehead’s trying to nap a mill at the mill
She sits down on a bearskin and she says you’ll be my man
I’ll have me the best bear hunter in the hills
A wild child was Tiger Whitehead and they say he killed
Ninety-nine bears before he went to rest, went to rest
Once he left two bear cubs orphaned but he brought them right on home
And Sally nursed the two bear cubs upon her breast
Tiger now is eighty-five and he lay upon his bed
And the bears he killed now numbered ninety-nine, ninety-nine
Some fellers trapped the bears but Tiger said just let him go
If he ain’t running wild he won’t be mine
But at night when the wind howls cross the hills of eastern Tennessee
And when the lightning flashes there’s the strange thing that the people say
they see
An old grey-headed ghost running through the mountains there
It’s Tiger Whitehead after his one hundredth bear