Steve, D & T aver in the Third Ed. preface that "some airs" were taken by permission from Smith's "Music of the Waters" (1888).

As best I can tell, these are

1. Lowlands.

2. The Chanteyman's Song.

3. The Golden Vanitee.

4. Married to a Mermaid.

5. Eliza Lee.

6. The Stormy Winds Do Blow.

Note "airs," not words. Other songs that appear in both books show different "airs" and often differing words. Smith seems *not* to have borrowed anything from
D & T (1887).

A comparison of Smith's lyrics with D & T's shows that while they are sometimes more sentimental than we would expect from later generations, they're generally not nearly as romantically elaborated the versions of D & T.

This seems to reinforce my suggestion (on another thread) that Davis (credited with the lyrics) wrote or "poeticized" most of them himself
And why not? The target audience for the collection, with Tozer's elaborate piano accompaniments, was clearly that of Victorian concert and parlor singers - not modern folklore scholars. The tunes, I'm sure both men believed, were obviously worth preserving - unlike the trivial words that chanteymen were really singing. These demanded to be extended, altered, or sentimentally "improved" in most cases.

When the editors write (1887) "this is the first time" the chanteys have had "recognised words set to them," they must mean not "trad" words (except incidentally) but words they expect to become "standard."

That's the only sense I can make of "recognised" in light of everything else. The only alternative meaning would be "traditional" - and most of D & T's lyrics seem not to be that.

Steve and Gibb will probably have more to say about these things.