> I know that 'The Streams of Lovely Nancy' was printed on a broadside, but it seems hard to imagine that a broadside writer would have consciously sat down and penned so many non-sequiturs.

Semi-seriously, what if he was drunk?

More seriously, why would a rural singer be more likely to have done so?

Someone, hack or otherwise, who was vaguely familiar with the convoluted diction of some 17th and 18th century poetry might conceivably have thought that this was how a lyric was supposed to sound.

Just my 2 cents.