crossing muddy waters

Lyrics

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, 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,