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
Lapping 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 these 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
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
Lapping water like a dog
Tiger Whitehead's in the bed
Sleeping like a log
Tomorrow he'll see bear tracks
Seven inches wide
And by sundown
He'll be bringing in the hide
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
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
Lapping water like a dog
Tiger Whitehead's in the bed
Sleeping like a log
Tomorrow he'll see bear tracks
Seven inches wide
And by sundown
He'll be bringing in the hide