> Are there any sources earlier than the 1935 Lomax "Southern Journey" recording from the Georgia Sea Islands?

Nope. All subsequent versions stem ultimately from "Paul Campbell's."

As for "wiggling their arse with a roll and go," it is almost certainly authentic - though it may never have been sung to this chantey, which seems to have been virtually unknown elsewhere.

In "Shanties from the Seven Seas," Hugill gives "Waggle an' dance with a toll 'n' go" as a line in "Donkey Riding." In the slightly more outspoken "Shanties and Sailors' Songs" the line is "Waggle and wriggle wid a roll 'n' go"; as well as "Where they waggle their backsides too."

The modern standardization of chantey lyrics has completely obscured the fact that after three or four "regulation" verses, any chantey might be filled out with verses from any other (as long as they scanned), or with lines ad-libbed, or lines lifted or modified from other chanteys and non-chanteys.

This freedom to improvise explains why most chanteys collected from real nineteenth-century seamen are so short: all they could recall, evidently, were the regulation verses that they'd heard repeatedly.

Because it told a coherent story, "Reuben Ranzo" rarely varied. That made it, and a few others, exceptional.

Some chanteymen were undoubtedly better at ad-libbing than others. Many - perhaps most - undoubtedly sang their own personal combinations of verses, with minor variations, all the time.

Hugill's texts, moreover, are a melange of what he actually heard at sea, what he undoubtedly made up himself at sea (or in some cases may have occurred to him later), and stanzas from earlier collectors. He wanted to offer texts that were as "complete" as possible and as printable as possible.