Hi Keith--

One of my interests will be to see where the Peru "thread" started. I can't remember off-hand if it appeared in any of the historical documentations or if, rather, later on, after someone tried to make sense of "hilo" and ascribed it to the Peruvian port, made up that verse.

If the "hilo" in "Tom's Gone" is the same as the one in "Johnny come down," then the Peruvian port idea seems highly unlikely. The question is whether shantymen or folksingers first took up the idea.