First mention of a vessel/crew type (?) and first n-bomb attached to the lyric. Also some of the hokum/bowdlerization - authorship/copyrights context running through other threads at the moment:

“Now, seamen who spent their time in cargo-carrying sailing ships never heard a decent Shanty; the words which sailor John put to them when unrestrained were the veriest filth. But another state of things obtained in passenger and troop ships; here sailor John was given to understand very forcibly that his words were to be decent or that he was not to shanty at all. (As a rule, when the passengers were landed and this prohibition was removed, the notorious "Hog-Eye Man" at once made its appearance.) The consequence was that in those ships the old-time Shanties were sung to their proper words, and most of the good ones had a story in verse that never varied, though in a long hoist if the regulation words did not suffice, a good shanty-man would improvise to spin out. It was in these vessels—and these only—that a collector of songs was wanted, and it was only in such vessels that a collection could have been made. Such a collection was made, both of Songs and Shanties, by me.

Other compilers of collections of songs have in some cases taken songs from this book without acknowledgment. It must be understood that all rights are rigidly reserved both as to words and music....”


“THIS shanty dates from 1849-50. At that time gold was found in California. There was no road across the continent, and all who rushed to the goldfields (with few exceptions) went in sailing-ships round the Horn, San Francisco being the port they made for.This influx of people and increase of trade brought railway building to the front ; most of the " navvies" were negroes. But until the roads were made there was a great business carried on by water, the chief vehicles being barges, called "hog-eyes." The derivation of the name is unknown to me. The sailor in a new trade was bound to have a new shanty, and this song was the result:

Oh, go fetch me down my riding cane,
For I'm goin' to see my darlin' Jane!
And a hog-eye rail road nigger, with his hog-eye!

O the hog-eye men are all the go,
When they come down to San-Fran-cis-co,
        In a hog-eye, etc.

Now, it's "who's been here since I been gone?"
A railroad nigger with his sea boots on,
        And a hog-eye, etc.

O Sally in the garden picking peas,
Her golden hair hanging down to her knees,
And a hog-eye, etc.”
[Ships, Sea Songs and Shanties, 2nd ed, Whall, 1913]