Here is a variant collected by AP Hudson in Mississippi: It was secured by Mr. George Swetnam from the singing of his mother, Mrs. F.S. Swetnam, Vaiden. Compare Campbell and Sharp, No 76.

I came to this country in eighteen and forty nine;
I saw many true lovers, but I never saw mine.
I looked all around me and saw I was alone,
And I a poor soldier, and a long way from home.


Farewell to my father likewise mother too;
I'm going to travel the wilderness through.
And when I get tired I'll sit down and weep,
And think of my pretty Saro, my darling and sweet.

"Tis not the long journey I am dreading to go,
The country I'm leaving, nor the debts that I owe:
There's one thing that grieves me and bears on my mind:
It is leaving pretty Saro, by darling, behind.

Pretty Saro, pretty Saro, I must now let you know:
How truly I love you I never can show.
I wish I was a poet, could write some find hand;
I would write my love a letter, that she might understand.
I would send it by the waters, as the Ireland doth flow,
And think of pretty Saro, my darling and sweet.