Given the variety of collected and published versions, most of them telling stories that are confused and/or incomplete, I quite understand modern singers choosing to construct their own versions. However it is noteworthy how different even these rebuilds are from one another, with different story elements included or excluded.

Whose decision is it that she needs to be thrown overboard; the captain's, the sailors', or the girl's herself? What makes her a Jonah: the theft, the pregnancy, the birth on board? Does she swim? Can she swim all the way to land (as implied by the "she will never leave off swimming" verse)? If the expectation is that she will be drowned, how likely is her body to be washed ashore, where the specified coffin can be provided?