My mother used to sing the Burl Ives standards when I was a child, and they were the first songs I learned.
I loved "Big Rock Candy Mountain" and "When I First Came To This Land" and, to my shame, I also enjoyed "Kumbaya" (though these days it always sounds like a Geordie shepherd losing his rag with a sheepdog to me!).
She also used to sing one to me in dog-Latin, with a refrain along the lines of "Peri-merry dixie domine..." but I can't for the life of me remember the rest of it.