1961        Hugill, Stan. _Shanties from the Seven Seas: Shipboard Work-Songs from the Great Days of Sail. London_.

Hugill read the preceding works by Terry, Sharp, and Doerflinger. Says that Terry made it popular in schools, so it was well known in Hugill's day. Hugill claims to have known an "old sailor" who sang it as "Johnny, Come Down the Backstay." He states, without support, that the tune was "Irish in origin."

He doesn't give the precise origin of his version. One can analyze it as the then-popular Terry version (either folk-processed or, likely, tweaked at the time of publication to Hugill's idiosyncratic sense of proper prosody/grammar/spelling)...combined with the "Uncle Ned" verse (i.e. offered by Doerflinger) and finished with a floating verse often associated with "Hog-Eye Man." I am sure that it is certainly informed by Hugill's experiences singing the song, however, it is modeled on a base of prior published material.

JOHNNY COME DOWN TO HILO

I niver seed the like since I bin born,

Ooh, a big buck nigger wid his sea boots on,

Oh, Johnny come down to Hilo., Poor ol' man,
Oooh! wake her! Oh, shake her!

Ooh, wake dat gal with the blue dress on,

When Johnny comes down to Hilo., Poor ol' man!

2. I love a little gal acrosst de sea,

She's a big buck nigger ['Badian beauty] and she sez to me,


3. Wuz ye never down in Mobile Bay
,
A-screwin' cotton for a dollar a day?


4. Ooh, there once wuz a nigger an' his name wuz Uncle Ned,
An' he had no yarns on the top o' his head.

5. Did ye ever see the ol' plantation boss
,
An' his long-tailed filly an' his big, black hoss?


6. Oh, go fetch me down me riding cane,
For I'm off to see me sweetheart Jane.

7. Ooh, Sally [Jinny] in the garden, pickin' peas,
An' the hair of her head hangin' down to her knees.

Though one doesn't imagine the tune *necessarily* varying that much, FWIW each of the original version -- Bullen, Short (Sharp), Hatfield, Maitland (Doerflinger) -- have minor variations. Hugill's comes as close as it can come to Terry's -- suggesting again that this popular version was in the air influencing things even before Hugill went to sea.