It turns out that the version Joe Hickerson recorded for us on Drive Dull Care Away, Volume 2 was learned from Carl Sandburg's The American Songbag, but Joe mislearned the tune, switching it from Myxolidian to Aeolian. Sandburg has obtained a number of songs (without the tunes) from Robert W. Gordon who was the first head of the Archive of American Folksong at the Library of Congress, a position Joe Hickerson later held for a number of years. Gordon had the text from Mrs. O. Mobley of Springfield, Illinois. Joe thinks that Sandburg may have taken the tune he used from Kidson's Traditional Tunes (1891), but notes that it was in 4/4 rather than 3/4 there. Thus, kids, is the tradition modified.

As Vonnegut would say: "And so it goes..."

Sandy