I wonder if this song is not a very, very distant descendant of -- OR super-distant cousin of the Scots ballad "Sir Patrick Spens." The theme of a man lost at sea, and a woman waiting for him on the beach, is mostly what they have in common. I have little doubt that its roots go back before the 20th century. The song comes to us out of Appalachia, a region that comes nowhere close to the sea. When we were very nerdy little boys, my younger brother was fascinated by old lore. I don't know if he actually heard "Sir Patrick Spens," but I remember him singing it, and the tune he sang, which in my mind is "the" tune of that ballad, is reminiscent -- again, as if a distant cousin -- of "What Did the Deep Sea Say/Where is My Sailor Boy?" We all know how these things evolve, and still evolve: half heard one place, re-composed elsewhere. I heard this first from the Lilly Bros. recording in the early 60s with Don Stover, a very uptempo bluegrass version similar to Doc Watson's, and as has been noted above in this thread, very different from Woody Guthrie's version. Just learned the song for a show my pal and I are doing on Facebook Live sometime soon -- all about the songs Bob Dylan tweaked, re-lyric'd, rebuilt and outright stole.