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Arkansas Traveler 
Arkansas Traveler 
Oh once upon a time in Arkansas An old man sat in his little cabin door, And fiddled at a tune that he liked to hear, A jolly old tune that he played by ear. 
It was raining hard but the fiddler didn't care He sawed away at the popular air, Though his roof tree leaked like a water fall That didn't seem to bother than man at all 
A traveler was riding by that day, And stopped to hear him a-practicing away The cabin was afloat and his feet were wet, But still the old man didn't seem to fret. 
So the stranger said: "Now the way it seems to me, You'd better mend your roof," said he. But the old man said, as he played away: "I couldn't mend it now, it's a rainy day." 
The traveler replied: "That's all quite true, But this, I think, is the thing for you to do; Get busy on a day that is fair and bright, Then pitch the old roof till it's good and tight." 
But the old man kept on a-playing at his reel, And tapped the ground with his leathery heel: "Get along," said he, "for you give me a pain; My cabin never leaks when it doesn't rain." 
The play "The Arkansas Traveler" was a favorite attraction in Salem, Ohio, in the 1850's. It tells of a travel's experience with an Arkansas squatter whom he finds sitting in his cabin playing away at a tune which he has heard for the first time on a trip to New Orleans. The entire play revolves around this tune 
and the squatter's effort to remember the ending of it. DC