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Leave My Bones in the Ground

Music and Lyric by David W. Jacobsen
Copyright 2020. All Rights Reserved.

Leave my bones in the ground
Leave my bones in the ground
Old rough and ready
Leave my bones in the ground
How did I die?
Leave my bones in the ground

On the frontier, on the land
I'm in control, I'm in command
Battles fought and brought on fame
Enough for me to stake a claim

Leave my bones in the ground
Leave my bones in the ground
Old rough and ready
Leave my bones in the ground
How did I die?
Leave my bones in the ground

Rising up now to the top
They thought that I'd just be their prop
That's not the way I roll
But hell if I know how to get out of this hole

Leave my bones in the ground
Leave my bones in the ground
Old rough and ready
Leave my bones in the ground
How did I die?
Leave my bones in the ground

I hear my summons as it impends
I regret nothing but I'm sorry to leave my friends
8 white horses dragged me for two miles
At the end of all my trials

Was it cherries that slaves did pick
Or was it arsenic
140 years go flying by
Leave me be, don't verify

Leave my bones in the ground
Leave my bones in the ground
Old rough and ready
Leave my bones in the ground
How did I die?
How did I die?
How did I die?
How did I die?
Leave my bones in the ground

Notes:

This is Zachary Taylor singing from the grave as his body is exhumed.

I read Zachary Taylor (American Presidents Series) by John S. D. Eisenhowe trying to find something interesting around which to base a song, but the most interesting thing about him happened 141 years after he died in office, when a bunch of researchers exhumed his body to test his corpse to see if he might have been poisoned with arsenic. To the extent that you can tell whether someone was poisoned with arsenic 141 years after they died, they concluded he was not. Taylor was only president for 16 months before he died somewhat mysteriously in 1850 at age 65. He'd annoyed a number of people, as presidents often do, so there was motive for him to have been poisoned. However, dying at age 65 in 1850 wasn't exactly an uncommon occurrence. Still rumors of assassination by poisoning persisted for 141 years until his descendants agreed to let scientists test his remains in 1991.

I wrote this song before I went to his grave site in Louisville, KY, where upon I found a significant problem with my lyric. Like Grant, he is not buried in the ground.

From the album Potus
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