An early printing under the title "The Waitress and the Sailor," tidied up no doubt, and sung to a variant of the usual tune, appears in "Songs My Mother Never Taught Me," by John Jacob Niles and Douglas Moore (N.Y.: Macaulay Co., 1929. The authors say it was current in World War One - undoubtedly true, since a British text of the period is given in John Brophy and Eric Partridge, "The Long Trail," published in 1965. Eric Posselt's "G.I. Songs" (1943) gives a text much like that of Niles and Douglas.