Aunt Gilly was a Texas belle
When she was fair and twenty,
The cowboys for a hundred miles
Came courting her a-plenty.
Her father said he couldn't stir,
For leather boot and silver spur.

At Texas dances long ago
Folk thought her conduct shocking,
When she swirled ruffled petticoats
And showed a silken stocking.
But Gilly swirled again with laughter,
And kicked a toe at the dusty rafter.

Her father was a sober man,
Her mother was a prude,
They barred their hearts when she left home
And married some strange dude.
But he owned a smile and a red guitar,
And the road he offered led sweet and far.

Aunt Gilly lost her smiling man
In a gambling house affray,
When he was second at the draw
In a San Antone cafe.
A screech owl warned of the news before
They laid him dead at her kitchen door.

She'll need a tidy sum, they said,
To keep her from the cold,
So they passed around a gallon hat
And filled it full of gold.
In thanking them her lips were brave,
Gold could not pay for that new grave.

She bought herself a cattle ranch,
Just off the Chisholm Trail,
And settled down to raising steers
As well as any male.
She rode the range in skirts, of course,
But she was a demon on a horse.

My great aunt Gilly lived alone
For threescore years and seven,
The preacher at her funeral
Said she went to heaven.
But my Aunt Gilly rides a star
With a mustached dude and a new guitar.