The Lakes of Pontchartrain
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The Lakes of Pontchartrain is an American Civil War song. It shares similar chords and tuning with the Beatles hit Blackbird. All known recordings of the song title "Lakes" as plural, but geographically there is only one Lake of Pontchartrain north of New Orleans.
According to Ready for the Storm, the album by Déanta, this is a "traditional Creole love song, which is commonly mistaken as being of Irish origin."
It is recorded also on the Planxty album, Cold Blow the Rainy Night. (Shanachie 79011, 1989) The information from that album states that the tune was probably brought back from British and French soldiers fighting in Louisiana and Canada in the War of 1812.
The alternate verse is from the Digital Tradition Folk Song Search.
Another version of the lyrics The Lily of the West was recorded by Peter, Paul and Mary. The Golden Encyclopedia of Folk Music states it was an "English street ballad (broadside ballad)" about 100 years ago.
Bob Dylan performed the song frequently in his early tours[1]. The Be Good Tanyas recorded a version on their album Blue Horse.
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