The Ballad of Billie Potts
Robert Penn Warren
(When I
w.as
a child I heard this story from an old lady who was a relative of
mine. The scene, according to her version, was in the section of Western Kentucky
known as "Between the Rivers," the region between the Cumberland and the
Tennessee. Years late-r, I came across another version in a book on the history of
the outlaws of the Cave Inn Rock. The name of Bardstown in the present account
refers to Bardstown, Kentucky, where the first race track west of the mountains
was laid out late in the eighteenth century.)
B
IG
Billie Potts was big and stout
In the land between the rivers.
Iiis shoulders were wide and his gut stuck out
Like a croker of nubbins and
his
holler and shout
Made the bob-cat shiver and the black-jack leaves shake
In the section between the rivers.
He would slap you on your back and laugh.
Big Billie had a wife, she was dark and little
In the land between the rivers,
And clever with her wheel and clever with her kettle,
But she never said a word and when she sat
By the fire her eyes worked slow and narrow like a cat
In the land between the rivers.
Nobody knew what was in her head.
T hey had a big boy with fuzz on
his
chin
So tall he ducked the door when he came in,
A clabber-headed bastard with snot in his nose
And big red
wrists
hanging out of his clothes
And a whicker when he laughed where his father had a beller
In the section between the rivers.
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