Tiger Whitehead - Johnny Cash

Wild blackberries blooming in the thickest on the mountain

Sheep shire and watercress are growing round the fountain

Where a big black bear is drinking, lappin' water like a dog

Tiger Whitehead’s in the bed sleeping like a log

But tomorrow he’ll see bear tracks seven inches wide

And by sundown he’ll be bringing in the hide

Pretty Sally Garland coming down the mountainside

Where Tiger Whitehead’s trying to nap a mill at the mill

She sits down on a bearskin and she says you’ll be my man

I’ll have me the best bear hunter in the hills

A wild child was Tiger Whitehead and they say he killed

Ninety-nine bears before he went to rest, went to rest

Once he left two bear cubs orphaned but he brought them right on home

And Sally nursed the two bear cubs upon her breast

Tiger now is eighty-five and he lay upon his bed

And the bears he killed now numbered ninety-nine, ninety-nine

Some fellers trapped the bears but Tiger said just let him go

If he ain’t running wild he won’t be mine

But at night when the wind howls cross the hills of eastern Tennessee

And when the lightning flashes there’s the strange thing that the people say

they see

An old grey-headed ghost running through the mountains there

It’s Tiger Whitehead after his one hundredth bear