I don't know why it's taken me this long to research this, but here I am. My mother sang the chorus of this song to us as a lullaby, and I sing it to my three daughters, but no one knows where it came from. My mother says her grandmother sang it to her, and I'm particularly interested in the aforementioned connection to North Carolina connection, as her father was from Anson county (Greensboro), where he enlisted and served in the Confederacy. For me, it's very evocative of our family's history for generations, and I plan to keep singing it...