Dead Man's Hand

The Grand Forks Daily Herald back in 1886
Defined a “dead man’s hand” before all other sources known,
But not a way that ever in the present era sticks:
Three jacks, two tens, a full house that supposedly was shown

To lose a man his real house, so he promptly died of shock.
Some other early sources gave the hand as tens and treys
Or jacks and eights or jacks and sevens; nonetheless, the talk
Of eights and aces came to overwhelm all other ways.

You may have heard Bill Hickok held the eights and aces hand.
The fifth card was the deuces of spades, the queen of clubs or hearts,
The jack of diamonds—no one knows for sure, I understand.
Indeed, the cards’ whole story was suspicious from the start.

We know that Bill was shot while playing poker in a bar,
But 50 years elapsed before a claim to what he held
Was published by Frank Wilstach. Well, the rumor traveled far,
And maybe now there’s not much point in having it dispelled.