This song is alluded to in Chapter XVIII of Elizabeth Gaskell's novel Sylvia's Lovers (1863). When Charles Kinraid is taken by the press gang when on the way to rejoin his whaler at North Shields, he attempts to send a message via a bystanding friend to his beloved Sylvia Robson [her of the book's title]. The leader of the gang facetiously speculates that he is "asking her to come for to serve on board ship along with he, like Billy Taylor's young woman".

The Oxford World's Classics edition of 1982, the only one I have come across with notes, misses this reference, although it contains an acknowledgment to staff at the Vaughan Williams Library at Cecil Sharp House. I rectified this omission with an essay in Oxford University Press's journal for such observations, Notes & Queries, for March 1999.

~Michael~