It occurs to me as I read this thread that the fact that this song is first documented in Harvard or Yale songbooks does not mean that it is not of African American {Southern slaves] origin. First of all, some students attending Harvard and Yale during that time lived on plantations, were raised by African Americans, used to play with African Americans, and had otherwise had opportunities to hear African American singing.

Furthermore, I read {somewhere} that it was the practice of well to do Southern 'gentlemen' to bring at least one slave to the North with them to tend to their housekeeping needs. Therefore, students other than those coming from the South could have heard and documented that song.

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Upthread, I note that Masuto had a post saying that the songs included in Talley's 1922 book Negro Folk Songs have no source. Talley, an African American professor at Fisk, indicated in his book that these rhymes were from his childhood memories as well as collected from his [African American] students. He also writes that many of these songs were very old..

Beyond that, no other sources are cited {for instance, Talley didn't say that x song was from y student from a specific state who heard the song in a specified year under specified circumstances. While these kind of demographics would have been great to have, I'm very grateful that Talley documented these songs.