[3] Based on a sailor's song, the song has been recorded by many artists, including Moe Bandy, Johnny Cash, Cisco Houston, Burl Ives, Bruce Molsky, The Residents, Tex Ritter, Roy Rogers, Colter Wall, William Elliott Whitmore, Sam Shackleton, and Clifton Hicks.
"[4][5][6] The Ocean Burial was written by Edwin Hubbell Chapin, published in 1839, and put to music by George N.
The "Bury Me Not On The Lone Prairie" music was adapted for the soundtrack to John Ford's 1939 western film Stagecoach.
"[16] Bugs Bunny sings the line "bury me not on the lone prairie" in at least four Warner Brothers animated shorts: 1942's The Wacky Wabbit (while shoveling dirt into a hole Elmer Fudd has just fallen into); 1945's Hare Trigger (after Yosemite Sam, mistaking red ink Bugs has poured on him for blood, falls down as if dead); 1980's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Bunny (while pretending to die); and 1992's Invasion of the Bunny Snatchers (on arriving at a desert).
A version of this song was used in the video game Red Dead Redemption, sung by William Elliott Whitmore.
These words came low and mournfully From the pallid lips of the youth who lay On his dying bed at the close of day.
"I've always wished to be laid when I died In a little churchyard on the green hillside By my father's grave, there let me be, O bury me not on the lone prairie."
And the cowboys now as they roam the plain, For they marked the spot where his bones were lain, Fling a handful o' roses o'er his grave With a prayer to God his soul to save.
[17] One version collected for publication by the Southern Pacific Company in 1912 omits the final verse and concludes with another round of the chorus, which is there rendered: "O bury me not on the lone prairie Where the wild coyote will howl o'er me Where the rattlesnakes hiss and the wind blows free