I know next to nothing about traditional music, but my family is from the mountains of North Carolina, and my dad sings a song he calls "rattlesnake mountain" which includes the "snee-y snake" bit. He told me that he had learned it from someone who had learned it from an old man near north wilkesboro, north carolina who told him that it had never been written down, and was only to be transmitted from person to person by mouth. In his version no one dies and the upshot is that he owes the girl his life and has to marry her, with a joke on whether it would have been better to have stuck with the snake. Has anyone heard this version anywhere? Do you know if it really has ever been written down? I'd love to know where if it has.