<P> "Streets of Laredo" (Laws B01, Roud 23650), also known as the "Cowboy's Lament", is a famous American cowboy ballad in which a dying cowboy tells his story to another cowboy . Members of the Western Writers of America chose it as one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time . </P> <P> Derived from the English folk song "The Unfortunate Rake", the song has become a folk music standard, and as such has been performed, recorded and adapted numerous times, with many variations . The title refers to the city of Laredo, Texas . </P> <P> The old - time cowboy Frank H. Maynard (1853--1926) of Colorado Springs, Colorado, claimed authorship of the revised Cowboy's Lament, and his story was widely reported in 1924 by the journalism professor Elmo Scott Watson, then on the faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign . </P>

We beat the drum slowly and play the fife lowly