I doubt that Harlow would call his own creation "doggerel."

Harlow and others intended to preserve the shanties, not to become millionaire singer-singwriters (a job description which didn't exist at the time). I can't believe they were consciously "faking." What Harlow and others may have done frequently is to try to reconstruct something imperfectly remembered from years before. They would innocently refer to printed versions to refresh their memory. After all, if it's in a book, it must be right! (Sarcasm disclaimer.) Like Bishop Percy, some authors of shanty books may have felt it was actually *desirable* to spruce up the words, so as to make a "better" song for readers to remember.

In cases like this, my guess is that what's on the page approximates the theme of what was actually sung. The language does strike me as literary, but there was no more accounting for taste in the 1870s than there is now.

It would be valuable to separate the texts that we *know* were collected in the field and unaltered or scarcely altered (Carpenter, Sharp, Doerflinger, etc.) and compare them with the rest. The results might be startling.