"Sedi Mara na kamen studencu" ("Mary is Sitting on a Stone Well") is a folk song. It may have been the source for the melody of the Hawaiian anthem "Aloha ʻOe".[1]
The song comes from the region of Sombor. It was originally sung with an Ekavian accent. The song was written by Dimitrije "Mita" Popovic, a Serbian lawyer and poet born in Hungary. He was in 1841 in Baja (Austrian Empire) and died in Budapest in 1888 (Austria-Hungary).
"Sedi Mara na kamen studencu" has an Austro-German version called "Die Träne" ("The Tear"). When German bandmaster Henri Berger was invited to Hawaii by King Kamehameha V in 1872, he composed Hawaiian songs which were adapted from German folk tunes.