When working on my adaptation of “She’ll Be Coming Around the Mountain,” I wanted to do something similar to my version of “On Top of Old Smoky.” I wanted to turn it into a fun, silly, and hopefully rememberable song. One kids will have fun singing.

Now sometimes I don’t know where my inspiration comes. An idea will just hit me, and this can happen while I’m walking the dog, cooking dinner, or on the verge of falling sleep. The best ideas always seem to strike when I am away from my computer, which is what happened in this case.

I started to think: What if the main character was a clown? So I began to list all the things that remind me of a clown: big nose, floppy shoes, painted face . . . Then I started to wonder: What will the clown be doing? And that’s when it struck me, my clown, the clown in this song will be a rodeo clown. And instead of riding a buckin’ bronco, she’ll be trying to round up a pesky billy goat.

And then I wrote . . .

She’ll round up a billy goat on the loose.
(na-a-a-a, na-a-a-a)
She’ll round up a billy goat on the loose.
She’ll round up a billy goat,
she’ll round up a billy goat,
She’ll round up a billy goat on the loose.
(na-a-a-a, na-a-a-a)

“She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountian” was once a song sung by railroad workers, and as one person sang, the other workers would call out after certain lines in the song. I thought it would be fun to do that as well, so each verse will have call outs, like this one, which has the billy goat na-ing.