Ballad Of Hard Luck Henry Lyrics - Hank Snow

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