Hank Snow - Ballad Of Hard Luck Henry Lyrics

Now wouldn't you expect to find a man an awful crank

That's staked out nigh three hundred claims and every one a blank

That's followed every fool stampede and seen the rise and fall

Of camps where men got gold in chunks and he got none at all

That's prospected a bit of ground and sold it for a song

To see it yield a fortune to some fool that came along

That's sunk a dozen bed-rock holes and not a speck in sight

Yet sees them take a million from the claims to left and right

Now aren't things like that enough to drive a man to booze

But Hard-Luck Smith was hoodoo-proof he knew the way to lose



Twas in the fall of nineteen four leap-year I've heard them say

When Hard-Luck came to Hunker Creek and took a hillside lay

And lo! as if to make amends for all the futile past

Late in the year he struck it rich the real pay-streak at last

The riffles of his sluicing-box were choked with speckled earth

And night and day he worked that lay for all that he was worth

And when in chill December's gloom his lucky lease expired

He found that he had made a stake as big as he desired



One day while meditating on the waywardness of fate

He felt the ache of lonely man to find a fitting mate

A petticoated pard to cheer his solitary life

A woman with soft soothing ways a confidant a wife

And while he cooked his supper on his little Yukon stove

He wished that he had staked a claim in Love's rich treasure-trove

When suddenly he paused and held aloft a Yukon egg

For there in pencilled letters was the magic name of Peg



You know these Yukon eggs of ours some pink some green some blue

A dollar per assorted tints assorted flavors too

The supercilious cheechako might designate them high

But one acquires a taste for them and likes them by and by

Well Hard-Luck Henry took this egg and held it to the light

And there was more faint pencilling that sorely taxed his sight

At last he made it out and then the legend ran like this

Will Klondike miner write to Peg Plumhollow Squashville Wis



That night he got to thinking of this far-off unknown fair

It seemed so sort of opportune an answer to his prayer

She flitted sweetly through his dreams she haunted him by day

She smiled through clouds of nicotine she cheered his weary way

At last he yielded to the spell his course of love he set

Wisconsin his objective point his object Margaret



With every mile of sea and land his longing grew and grew

He practised all his pretty words and these I fear were few

At last one frosty evening with a cold chill down his spine

He found himself before her house the threshold of the shrine

His courage flickered to a spark then glowed with sudden flame

He knocked he heard a welcome word she came his goddess came

Oh she was fair as any flower and huskily he spoke

I'm all the way from Klondike with a mighty heavy poke

I'm looking for a lassie one whose Christian name is Peg

Who sought a Klondike miner and who wrote it on an egg



The lassie gazed at him a space her cheeks grew rosy red

She gazed at him with tear-bright eyes then tenderly she said

Yes lonely Klondike miner it is true my name is Peg

It's also true I longed for you and wrote it on an egg

My heart went out to someone in that land of night and cold

But oh I fear that Yukon egg must have been mighty old

I waited long I hoped and feared you should have come before

I've been a wedded woman now for eighteen months or more

I'm sorry since you've come so far you ain't the one that wins

But won't you take a step inside I'll let you see the twins