Cowboy
The figure of the cowboy as drawn from American mythology: the lone rider who is simultaneously heroic, trustworthy, independent, and apart from the social world he passes through. In Taylor's writing the cowboy carries the doubled charge of American romantic archetype and outsider operating outside ordinary social rules - a figure who can be loved without being known, or who moves through a setting he doesn't belong to. The image extends to adjacent country-Western figures (the loner, the drifter, the man with no fixed home) that carry the same charge of self-contained mobility.
The cowboy carries the charge of American romantic archetype combined with self-contained mobility - a figure trusted on the strength of the archetype rather than on knowledge of the man, free to ride into and out of others' lives without accountability to the world he passes through.
Appears in 1 song
“You're a cowboy like me”
The cowboy is the central metaphor for a con artist or hustler, someone operating alone in a world they don't belong to, affecting familiarity to extract what they need. Uncle Jerry also reads it as carrying associations of heroism, trustworthiness, and loneliness.