The Tabor version must be based on an older folk song because there are lines from it in Steven Vincent Benet's epic Civil War poem "John Brown's Body" (1928). It comes near the end, from a country girl who met a Union deserter, got pregnant by him, then lost him when he was arrested.
               Love came by from the riversmoke,
                When the leaves were fresh on the tree,
               But I cut my heart on the blackjack oak
                Before they fell on me.

               The leaves are green in the early Spring,
                They are brown as linsey now,
               I did not ask for a wedding-ring
                From the wind in the bending bough.

               Fall lightly, lightly, leaves of the wild,
                Fall lightly on my care,
               I am not the first to go with child
                Because of the blowing air.

               I am not the first nor yet the last
                To watch a goosefeather sky,
               And wonder what will come of the blast
                And the name to call it by.

               Snow down, snow down, you whitefeather bird,
                Snow down, you winter storm,
               Where the good girls sleep with a gospel word
                To keep their honor warm.

               The good girls sleep in their modesty,
                The bad girls sleep in their shame,
               But I must sleep in the hollow tree
                Till my child can have a name.

               I will not ask for the wheel and thread
                To spin the labor plain,
               Or the scissors hidden under the bed
                To cut the bearing-pain.

               I will not ask for the prayer in church
                Or the preacher saying the prayer,
               But I will ask the shivering birch
                To hold its arms in the air.

               Cold and cold and cold again,
                Cold in the blackjack limb
               The winds of the sky for his sponsor-men
                And a bird to christen him.

               Now listen to me, you Tennessee corn,
                And listen to my word,
               This is the first child ever born
                That was christened by a bird.

               He's going to act like a hound let loose
                When he comes from the blackjack tree,
               And he's going to walk in proud shoes
                All over Tennessee.

               I'll feed him milk out of my own breast
                And call him Whistling Jack.
               And his dad'll bring him a partridge nest,
                As soon as his dad comes back.