It's related to "The Banks of Pontchartrain"--the tunes are similar and the metre is the same.

Funny how those things can work. A couple of years ago I befriended two young women living in a schoolbus on a B.C. mountainside. They were very good singers, had learned a bunch of trad songs off a Joan Baez tape which a friend had sent them. Being 18-year-old 90's girls with no previous exposure to this stuff, and no written lyric sources, they had some interesting interpretations. My favourite was in "Lily...", instead of "sore distressed my mind" they sang "sort of stressed my mind". Works perfect!

Bill C.