GUEST, shot synapses, there is a farily complex history of this song, starting in the US and moving to Great Britain where it became East Indians. It's all laid out in detail in this thread ... but piecemeal, which is how threads work.

Quick comment about Septimus Winner. He must have been incredibly prolific. There is at least one adaptation of a spiritual by Winner in "Heart Songs. He wrote "Listen to the Mockingbird," or at least the lyrics; apparently it was so successful that he tossed off a third verse that appears in later editions. And under the name of Alice Hawthorne, Winner was the author of "Whispering Hope." I have seen his name fairly frequently on other songs of the period.