Although not always respected as serious poetry, folk songs and poems like the ones in Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp represent a long tradition of oral transmission of verse narrative, distinct from more formal and “scholarly” poetical compositions. The poems in this collection speak about love, honor, friendship, and the lives of cowboys.

This collection was produced by musicologist and folklorist John A. Lomax , who did much to preserve traditional American songs. The poems in this production were mostly obtained from recitations by interviewees in the American west.