"The Pinery Boy", also known as "The Sailor Boy", "A Soldier's Life" or "Sweet William" is a ballad from Wisconsin. The "The Sailor Boy" or "A Soldier's Life" originals are known in Great Britain. "Deep Blue Sea" seems to be another version that has degenerated within oral tradition. "The Pinery Boy" was collected by Franz Rickaby who was a Professor of English at the University of North Dakota. Rickaby also collected "The Red Iron Ore" and "A Shantyman's Life". "The Pinery Boy" versions tend to mention Lone Rock and/or the Wisconsin Dells as the site of this tragedy, but the Wisconsin, River, according to Gard/Sorden, p. 95, was a very dangerous stream for raftsmen for much of its length: "[M]any of these danger spots, still bearing the names given them by the raftsmen, are points of interest along the Wisconsin River. Among these names are Sliding Rock, whose sloping sides make it impossible to gain any foothold; Notched Rock; the Devil's Elbow, a right-angle turn making passage very difficult; and the Narrows, where the River is said to be turned on its side, since its width is only fifty-two feet, and its depth is one hundred and fifty feet". The whole Dells region must have been difficult, since the river goes through a series of rather sharp bends, and the riverbanks and the bed are rough. The small town of Lone Rock is not properly part of the Dells; it is several dozen miles downstream, in a marshy, heavily wooded area. But it is on the Wisconsin River (and it has a Lone Rock Cemetery, according to Google Maps, so perhaps our hero was buried there). Ironically, the cemetery (off U. S. Highway 14) seems to be one of the few spots in the area which largely lacks trees. Lone Rock the town, not surprisingly, is named for a rock named Lone Rock, a sandstone formation on the north bank of the Wisconsin that raftsmen used for navigation -- this far below the Dells, the Wisconsin is fairly straight. but there is a spot near the rock called Devil's Bend, and the current is swift. So Lone Rock was important to let the raftsmen know there were near a tricky place. The Rock is no longer really visible, according to an online history of the area (http://tinyurl.com/tbdx-LoneRock). Much of the rock was taken and used for construction. Lone Rock the town came into being in 1856. The name "Lone Rock" for the sandstone pillar is older, but it seems unlikely that they would have buried the Pinery Boy there had the town not existed. The final verses of the ballad are borrowed from the "Butcher's Boy" family of ballads. The song was printed in Rickaby's Ballads and Songs of the Shanty-Boy (1926), Belden's Ballads and Songs Collected by the Missouri Folklore Society (1940), Randolph's Ozark Folk Songs (1946), Sharp's English Folk Songs in the Southern Appalachians (1932), Lomax's The Folk Songs of North America (1960), Laws' Native American Balladry: A descriptive study and bibliographical syllabus (1964) and Lloyd and Rivera's Folk Songs of the Americas (1965). It was recorded by Sam Eskin on Sea Shanties and Loggers' Songs (1951).