The chorus, 'Fare thee well, O honey, fare thee well,' as well as the verse structure, reminds me of the chantey. This would not be unexpected in Mississippi River levee workers.
I don't think I have run across 'fare thee well' in older Af-Am song. A number of the other lines are floaters, as noted above, but, all in all, an interesting song.

Joe, the dialect is what I heard when I lived in Texas and when I was going to University there, except that it is simpler, as if Lomax simplified it. In 1904, when he claimed to have collected the song, it would have been much more difficult to understand.
I find it odd that Lomax did not obtain the singer's name. Did he make up the story after the ABFS publication and people started singing the song? He seems to have been remiss in this regard with several of his collections.

The words in the DT are too 'clean,' and suggest a white educated singer of the 1960's (or an urban Af-Am who had received more than 4-5 years schooling which was about the norm for rural southern Black kids pre-WW1; not a woman with Dink's background).