Here is a variant from the AP Hudson, Folksongs of Mississippi and their background. Chapel Hill, The University of North Carolina Press, 1936. Very close to the Missouri version:

It is titled "Young Ladies" and is communicated by Mrs. G.V.Easley, Tula. Compare Cox, No 140;Campbell and Sharp, No 65; Wyman and Brockway, p. 55.

Come all you fair and tender ladies,
Take warning how you love young men;
They appear like a star in the summer morning,
First appear and then are gone again.

They'll tell to you some loving story,
Declare to you their love is true,
And away they'll go courting some other;
That's the love that they have for you.

Once I thought I had a true love;
Indeed, I thought he'd be my on;
But now he's gone to courting some other
And left me here to weep and moan.

I wish I was a little sparrow
With tender wings that I might fly,
And when he talked of love to another
Then I would be close by.

I'd ask him who he meant to flatter,
If it was me he would desire;
All on his bosom I would flutter
With my little bended wing.

But as I am no little sparrow,
neither wings nor can I fly,
I'll sit down and grieve in sorrow,
Sin and pass my troubles by.