Are there posts missing here? I've read through the thread, and the earliest poster seems to be suggesting that there is a "definitive" version of the somg. But at no point does anyone say what it is, or how it differs from the version in the DT.

Now, can someone tell be how an 1893 publication becomes the definitive version of a song first noted in 1812?

As for dialect, I suspect that even a conservative one like Geordie has changed quite a bit in 200-ish years.