Thanks for the transcription, Carter. Here's what I hear:

"Spain by day,"

"tamale-o!"

"Ups unto"   

"like a mastpole."

(The singer's intro and its delivery sound like an imitation of Burl Ives's on his late forties radio show.)

Significantly, a "monk" named Jumbo also appears in Harlow's version as well as in one found by Randolph in Missouri in 1929 from a man who said he'd learned it in 1898. Jumbo is absent from the ten stanzas in Immmortalia - and from all others printed AFAIK. In both Harlow and Randolph, "Jumbo" is a victim - though in Randolph he's described as both a "monk" and a "sailorman."

"Jumbo the Elephant" was a famous Barnum exhibit. According to Oxford:

"Jumbo... A big clumsy person, animal, or thing; popularized, esp., as the individual name of an elephant, famous for its size, in the London Zoological Gardens, subsequently sold in February 1882 to Barnum."

Once established in English, "Jumbo" would seem to be an inevitable rhyme for "Columbo." Wikipedia dates the elephant's appearance at the London Zoo to 1860. ("Dumbo," of course, was yet unknown.)