My baby's gone and I don't know why
She let out this morning
Like a rusty shot in a hollow sky
Left me without warning
Sooner than the dogs could bark
and faster than the sun rose
Down to the banks in an old mule car
she took a flatboat across the shallow

Left me in my tears to drown
she left a baby daughter
Now the water's wide and deep and brown
She's crossing muddy waters

Tobacco standing in the fields
be rotten come November
And a bitter heart will not reveal
a spring that love remembers
When that sweet brown girl of mine
her black eyes are ravens
We broke the bread and drank the wine
from a jug that she'd been saving

Left me in my tears to drown
she left a baby daughter
Now the water's wide and deep and brown
She's crossing muddy waters

Baby's crying and the daylight's gone
That big oak tree is groaning
In rush of wind and river of song
I can hear my sweetheart moaning
Crying for her baby child
or crying for her husband
Crying for that river's wild
to take her from her loved ones

Left me in my tears to drown
she left a baby daughter
Now the water's wide and deep and brown
She's crossing muddy waters

Left me in my tears to drown
she left a baby daughter
Now the water's wide and deep and brown
She's crossing muddy waters