My father, he was a mountaineer,His fist was a knotty hammer;He was quick on his feet as a running deer,And he spoke with a Yankee stammer.My mother, she was merry and brave,And so she came to her labor,With a tall green fir for her doctor graveAnd a stream for her comforting neighbor.And some are wrapped in the linen fine,And some like a godling's scion;But I was cradled on twigs of pineIn the skin of a mountain lion.And some remember a white, starched lapAnd a ewer with silver handles;But I remember a coonskin capAnd the smell of bayberry candles.The cabin logs, with the bark still rough,And my mother who laughed at trifles,And the tall, lank visitors, brown as snuff,With their long, straight squirrel-rifles.I can hear them dance, like a foggy song,Through the deepest one of my slumbers,The fiddle squeaking the boots alongAnd my father calling the numbers.****- Stephen Vincent Benét, 1922MP3: Steve Young - The Ballad Of William Sycamore (thx)