Holcomb's version is a brief survival of the earlier "Swannanoa Tunnel" / "Swannanoa Town," now verging on a century old.

Check out version by Bascom Lamar Lunsford (Folkways), the first to be sung widely in the folk community. Dulcimer singer and scholar Artus Moser also did a version.

It's one of the older hammer songs. Appears in Cecil Sharp's English Folk Songs From the Southern Appalachians V2, 42-3 as "Swannanoa Town" in two versions, one from Black Mt. NC, the other from Micaville NC, both sung by women, collected in 1916 and 1918 respectively.