Here is a version, with music, called "Pretty Sarry" from southern Indiana. You will find it in SINGING ABOUT IT: FOLK SONG IN SOUTHERN INDIANA [transcribed] by George List in 1991, and published by Indiana University at Bloomington, pp. 169-170. These songs were "Transcribed principally from recordings in the Indiana University Archives of Traditional Music."

"PRETTY SARRY"

Way down in some lone valley or in some other place,
Where the small birds do whistle, and their notes do increase,
I'll think of Pretty Sarry, her ways so complete;
I love her, my Sarry, from her head to her feet.

My love she won't have me, as I understand
She wants a freeholder and I have no land,
Yet I could maintain her on silver and gold
And as many other fine things as my love's house could hold.

I went to my Sarry, my love to unfold,
To tell her my passion so brave and so bold.
I said to her, "Sarry, will you be my bride,
And walk with me ever, right here by my side?"

"I love you, my Sarry, as you can well see.
I will take you a-traveling o'er land and o'er sea.
...some jewels I will buy you to wear,
For there's no one, my true love, to me is more fair."

Then Sarry held out her sweet little hand,
And said, "I can't love you for you have no land.
I have promised another to be his dear wife,
And walk with him ever, all the days of my life."

"You have broken my heart strings, Pretty Sarry," I said.
"I will go from your presence. I wish I was dead.
Some other lover will kneel at you feet
And take the dear kisses that I once thought so sweet."

The tune seems similar to other traditional versions, with complexities of its own. The note following the song says,

"Aunt" Phoebe explains how and when she learned this song at the beginning of Chapter 1[sorry I didn't get more of this information]. She had learned it from a great aunt who, in turn, had learned it in Virginia before 1800. George Malcolm Laws considers this a lyric song rather than a ballad. The song seems to be associated with the Appalachian region, there being only one non-Appalachian text printed, from the Ozarks. However, the song obviously refers to the colonial plantation life of the coastal plain, to a period when the English semifeudal aristocratic view still prevailed. The ownership of land was not only the mark of a family of good breeding but also the source of political power. A merchant, a nonfreeholder, no matter how successful, was to be rejected." (page 170)