I was thinking of singing the Soldier's Wife so I went over to Spotify to check it out (what a useful resource!) and I found several versions, notably the Carthy classic and one by P.J. Harvey which I love (and there's a brilliant video of this on YouTube). I noticed that there were two quite different sets of words; some of the cities had been changed for no apparent reason (P.J. has Amsterdam for Rotterdam!) and others had been left out—probably because it's quite long. Also there are some obvious mistakes—laces for lace! This motivated me to refer to the German original given above. I have only a few words of German (and one of those is Schwarzwalderkirschtorte) so I invoked a web translator to produce some pigeon and set about reconstructing an "original" by comparing the different versions and then cherry picking the best lines. So in the interest of scientific research I thought I would share my cherry-pigeon with you. It has all the original cities (apart from Tripoli as I prefer "Libya's desert sands").

What did the wife of the soldier get
From the ancient city of Prague?
From Prague she got stiletto shoes
Shiny and new, stiletto shoes
From the ancient city of Prague.

What did the wife of the soldier get
From Warsaw's Vistula beach.
From Warsaw she got the linen shirt.
So gay and strange, the linen shirt
She got from the Vistula beach.

What did the wife of the soldier get
From Oslo over the Sound?
From Oslo she got a collar of fur
How it pleases her, the collar of fur
From Oslo over the Sound.

What did the wife of the soldier get
From the wealth of Rottterdam?
From Rotterdam she got a hat.
She's cute in that, her little Dutch hat
From the wealth of Rotterdam.

What did the wife of the soldier get
From Brussels, the Belgian town?
From Brussels he sent her lace so rare,
For her to wear, the lace so rare
She got from the Belgian town.

What did the wife of the soldier get
From Paris, city of light.
From Paris she got a silken gown.
The talk of the town, that silken gown
From Paris, city of light.

What did the wife of the soldier get
From Libya's desert sands?
From Libya, the little charm.
Around her arm she wore the charm
She got from the desert sands.

What did the wife of the soldier get
From Russia's distant steppes?
From Russia she got the widow's veil.
And the end of the tale is the widow's veil
She got from the distant steppes.