My heart sinks when I see an ancient thread of this kind revived, as it usually means that someone wants to post either something that has already been said in every other discussion here on the same subject, or a pet theory which for them is self-evident fact but which (since they never cite verifiable sources) comes over as an unsubstantiated mishmash of selective fact and wishful thinking. Sometimes somebody actually adds some useful information, but it usually has to be extracted with tweezers and a magnifying glass from the surrounding junk and digression. I make an exception for Robyn, who raises some useful questions. Whether or not anyone can provide useful answers remains to be seen.

When I provided links to other discussions here five years ago, I didn't guarantee that they were accurate or reliable; nor do I now. To quote from A Dictionary of English Folklore (Simpson and Roud, OUP 2000, 'Helston Furry Day'):

'...the words of the verses are sufficiently obscure to have excited the vivid imaginations of amateur folklorists for decades...'

Clearly that hasn't changed.