Perhaps the blowers are on strike (does that make them strikers?) or off watch...I live in Oz and watch, mostly with amusement, the antics of ye Poms and Yanks on 'Cat fora. The good is very good, the bad is ... never mind ... folk of goodwill can always agree to disagree.
I have always loved the singing of shanties...so simple, so much fun.
The meaning of things is also important, so one explores the literature, non? This thread started as a simple question of meaning for a child's enjoyment. In my experience children enjoy word play for its own sake; my own kids have highly developed sense of the ridiculous, formed largely from the shared frivolous manglement of language. They are also very musical well adjusted social beings...
So blow the man any way you want to I say.
Last word for Jim Lad though, as the main speaker for the nay. Your own words about pre-conceived notions condemn your opinion, my friend. The Shorter Oxford Dictionary doesn't list anything like the "pipe=up" dream meaning you contend, among many meanings, but does have: "Blow, a stroke; a violent application of the fist or of any instrument to any object."
Another meaning is embodied in the Biblical quotation,
"Cunninge bloweth, charitie edifieth."

Om Shanti