NB, that version of Old Uncle Ned wasn't posted as a lyric (hence no heading "Lyrics Add"), but as an illustration of how minimal changes can make a significant difference to the singability of a song.

Mind I think that getting rid of the quaint spelling conventions makes a lot of sense in this kind of context. At Whitby this year Tim Laycock was saying in respect of the songs and poems of William Barnes, which were written in an attempt to put Dorset speech into writing, that he had found that, when they were put into standard spelling, Dorset speakers found it much easier to read them in a natural voice -which came out as Dorset speech.

George Orwell argues for the same practice in respect of Kipling's verse, for a different reason:

"The private soldier...is always made to speak in a sort of stylized cockney, not very broad, but with all the aitches and final 'g's carefully omitted...One can often improve Kipling's poems, make them less facetious and less blatant, by simply going through them and transplanting them from cockney into standard speech...In the ancient ballads the lord and the peasant speak the same language."

In the same way I feel writing "ob" for "of" and "de" for "the" gets in the way in Stephen Foster's songs. Generally song-collectors from the oral tradition have in fact avoided falling into this kind of trap, and it seems to me that if it makes sense to be able to treat the orally transmitted songs in this way, it makes good sense to feel able to treat the songs that were written down in the same way.

(And George Orwell, in that article, I cited goes on to say of Kipling "He is more often quoted aloud than read on the printed page, and most people instinctively make the necessary alterations when they quote him.")