Pretty soon after I picked up the fiddle, around the end of the war in Bosnia, I learned this from the wildly under appreciated Jeff Davis, although I already kind of knew it from Anne and Frank Warner's recording of Rebecca King Jones of Cape Hatteras NC that I got from Peter Kennedy in Gloucester, England ca. 1988. Lots of long stories. The words first appeared in a newspaper in 1863 when people used to write poems and newspapers used to print them. The tune is obviously The Bonny Blue Flag. I'm wondering if I should turn comments off. What do you think?