Thank you. So good to hear the Bessie Jones soundclip! And it included the swing and turn verse - so I was wrong about it being added later.

I found the version I quoted up above in a book called "Down in the Valley" (New England Dancing Masters Productions), which says "In Bessie Jones book 'For the Ancestors, Biographical Memories', collected and edited by John Stewart (Univ. of Illinois Press 1983, p. 45-46), Bessie says these games were a way for slaves to talk to the white man. Since slaves in Virginia, like her grandfather, made the bricks for the roads in Williamsburg, they were saying, 'you not paying me nothing, ... but someday maybe you'll remember me'. They sang 'to get the pressure off their minds'; they clapped and danced to feel good, as they put the bricks down with their feet, stepping them down. We learned this from New Hampshire caller Mary DesRosier."

~b.w.