Songfacts®:

• When Dolly Parton writes a story song, she never knows how it's going to end… but it's usually in tragedy. This mournful track from her second bluegrass album, Little Sparrow, is no different. It tells the tale of a beautiful girl who lives a charmed life in the mountains until she meets a man who has the devil in him.
  
  "You can see it all," Dolly described in her 2020 book, Songteller. "She falls in love with this guy who is almost like the devil, the way he puts a curse on her. He's just so evil and mean. He leaves her with a child. The child dies. She buries it up in the mountains. Her mind snaps. She's a mountain girl who runs wild in the mountains, living like a witch. She's naked, and her hair's all crazy. Since her baby's gone, she goes down to the schoolyard looking at all the little kids.
  
  It's got that mournful old sound, like Mama used to do. I incorporated that, 'Ooh, ooo, hoo,' where she's crying. I got to create it, I got to write it, and I got to act in it. Then she falls dead at the end on the baby's grave. I have to make it worse, right? If I ain't killing dogs and kids, I'm killing myself!"
• Little Sparrow was nominated for Best Bluegrass Album at the 2002 Grammy Awards. Dolly won the prize the previous year for The Grass Is Blue.