Shack Dye

 The white men played all sorts of jokes on me.

They took big fish off my hook
And put little ones on, while I was away
Getting a stringer, and made me believe
I hadn't seen aright the fish I had caught.

When Burr Robbins circus came to town
They got the ring master to let a tame leopard
Into the ring, and made me believe
I was whipping a wild beast like Samson
When I, for an offer of fifty dollars,
Dragged him out to his cage.

One time I entered my blacksmith shop
And shook as I saw some horse-shoes crawling
Across the floor, as if alive --
Walter Simmons had put a magnet
Under the barrel of water.

Yet everyone of you, you white men,
Was fooled about fish and about leopards too,
And you didn't know any more than the horse-shoes did.

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