True Love by Woody Guthrie

True Love was published in 1946 in Guthrie’s song book, offered in the public domain.

True love, true love
Don’t lie to me
Tell me where did you sleep last night?
I slept in the pines
Where the sun never shines
And I shivvered
With a cold deadly cold.

I wish to the Lord
I’d a never been born
Or died when I was young
I never would a kissed
Your sweet sweet lips
Nor heard your rattling tongue.

Woody
Tell me where did you get
Them pretty little shoes
And the dress
That you wear so fine
I got my shoes
From a railroad man
Got my dress
From a driver in a mine.

The longest train
I ever did ride
It was a hundred coaches long
the only woman
My heart ever loved
She’s on that train and gone.

Them long steel rails
Them short cross ties
Ain’t got no end I know
These long steel rails
These short cross ties
I’m trapped
My way back home.

Longest old train
In this whole wide world
Come around Joe Brown’s coal mine
Headlight come around
When the sun come up
The caboose
When the sun went down.

My husband was
A railroad man
Killed a mile and a half
From home.
I found his head
In an engine wheel
But his body
They never did find.

True love, true love
Tell me where
You will go
I”m gonna go
where the cold
Winds blow
Gonna weep
Gonna cry
Gonna moan
Gonna sigh
Gonna dance
In my good time clothes.

Yes my husband was
A railroad man
Was the best
In this high lonesome world
The only thing
That he ever done wrong
Was to miss
Just one
Little curve.

True love true love
Don’t lie to me
Tell me where
Did you sleep
Last night
I slept in the pine
Where the sun
Never shines
And I shivvered
With a cold
Deadly cold.
“As you sing this song down along the years you will come to like it better and better. And every time you sing it you will sing it just a little bit different. On of these days and night you will…”[image cuts off here].