I found this in a novel set in California in the 1920s, published in 1974 (but written much earlier):

Soon he moved on to another cow, humming to himself as he went:

Oh I lost my love and I care not,
He would come back but he dare not.

All day as she went about her work she kept thinking about it. What strange creatures people were…

—From The Devil's Hand by Edith Summers Kelley (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1974), page 209.

I have been unable to find when the book was written, but Kelley died in 1956 and her only other novel "Weeds" was published in 1923.

Here's the Library of Congress' description of The Devil's Hand, and two links at the bottom of that page lead to more information.