Almeda Riddle's version of it
(from Abrahams, Roger D.(ed.) / A Singer and Her Songs. Almeda Riddle's Book of Ballads, Louisiana State U. Press, Bk (1970), p 41):

Ten Thousand Miles Away

On the banks of a lonely river, ten thousand miles away,
I had a dear old mother whose hair had turned to gray.
Oh, blame me not for weeping, oh, blame me not I pray,
For I want to see my mother, ten thousand miles away.

I wish I were a little bird, I'd fly so far away,
To the banks of the lonely river, ten thousand miles away.
Last night, I lay a-sleeping, I dreamed a pleasant dream.
I thought I saw my mother, close by the lonely stream.
Oh, blame me not for weeping, and blame me not I pray,
For I want to see my mother, ten thousand miles away.

Today I got a letter, it's from my sister dear.
She spoke of my dear old mother, and I wish that she were near.
They tell that she's now sleeping in a lonely new-made grave,
My poor old aged mother whose hair had turned to gray.

As years roll on before me, I'll sometimes kneel and pray.
For the banks of the lonely river, ten thousand miles away.
So blame me not for weeping, and blame me not I pray,
I miss my aged mother, ten thousand miles away.

In the interview on the preceding page, Almeda Riddle says:

"Oh, yes my mother sang ballads. ... We'll here's a little one my mother sang to me as a child. I remember it very well. I can remember yet what I'd think when she'd sing this. I'd think maybe there was a girl that had married and gone away from her mother and she was a-crying to go back. I always had a fierce imagination--'fraid I still do have--and she was trying to go back to see her mother and probably it wasn't pleasing her husband. So at night, when she'd sing this, I could picture it that way. ... I was glad to say that I nevetr had to miss my mother much, because I wasn't separated from her much. We lived quite near to my mother. And my husband only lived nine years and then I went back to the old farm there to finish bringing up the children and lived in a house right close. When my father died in 1933, we moved in together and stayed together nearly as long as she lived. I was fifty-nine years old before I lost my mother, and with the exception of nine years of that time, I had lived either in the house or adjoining house with my mother."

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