"Streets of Laredo" also known as the "Cowboy's Lament", is a famous American cowboy ballad in which a dying cowboy tells his story to another cowboy. Members of the Western Writers of America chose it as one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time.

Derived from the traditional folk song "The Unfortunate Rake", the song has become a folk music standard, and as such has been performed, recorded and adapted numerous times, with many variations. The title refers to the city of Laredo, Texas.

The old-time cowboy Frank H. Maynard (1853–1926) of Colorado Springs, Colorado, claimed authorship of the revised Cowboy's Lament, and his story was widely reported in 1924 by the journalism professor Elmo Scott Watson, then on the faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The song is widely considered to be a traditional ballad. It was first published in 1910 in John Lomax's Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads.

Recordings of the song have been made by Vernon Dalhart, Eddy Arnold, Johnny Cash, Johnny Western, Joan Baez, Burl Ives, Jim Reeves, Roy Rogers, Marty Robbins, Chet Atkins, Arlo Guthrie, Norman Luboff Choir, Rex Allen, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and many country and western singers, as well as avant garde rocker John Cale, the British pop group Prefab Sprout, Snakefarm, Mercury Rev, Jane Siberry, Suzanne Vega and Paul Westerberg.

The Streets of Laredo (Lyrics)

As I walked out in the streets of Laredo
As I walked out in Laredo one day
I spied a young cowboy, all wrapped all in white linen
All wrapped in white linen, as cold as the clay

I see by your outfit that you are a cowboy
These words he did say as I boldly steped by
Come sit down beside me and hear my sad story
I'm shot in the breast and I know I must die

So beat the drum slowly and play the fife lowly
Play the Death March as you carry me along
Take me to the valley, there lay the sod o'er me
For I'm the young cowboy, andI know I've done wrong

Go bring me a cup, a cup of coldwater
To cool my parched lips, the Cowboy than said
But before I returned, his soul had departed,
He'd gone to the maker– the cowboy was dead

He fell for the daughter of a powerfull lawyer
But she was to young than to leave Mountain ray.
Last month they made plans to meet at the border
But her fathersman ended, those sweet plans today

So beat the drum slowly and play the fife lowly
Play the Death March as you carry me along
Take me to the valley, there lay the sod o'er me
For I'm the young cowboy, andI know I've done wrong

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