From Roger D. Abrahams, "Singing the Master: The Emergence of African American Culture in the Plantation South" (New York: Pantheon Books, ©1992), page 190:

There are a number of songs in the Ranzo group of chanteys that mention the "Wild Goose Nation." Hugill provides a number of folk explanations of the term, none of which refers directly to the story of the wild goose shot down by Old Master given here. As this song seems to refer to a recognizable Marster-John story, in which Marster tries to kill John only to find that he is too tough and wily to be killed, it is plausible that the very term "wild goose" may have referred to an unkillable slave, and that the sea chanteys are versions which recode the meaning of the song into a sea setting. For the Marster-John tale in which Old Marster gets so mad at his slave that he attempts to kill him in any way he can, but John keeps outwitting him, see Charles Joyner's discussion in Down by the Riverside, pp. 184-85, 317. This also may explain, in some part, the origin of the song "The Gray Goose," sung by Huddie Ledbetter, printed in John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax, Negro Folk Songs as Sung by Lead Belly (New York: Macmillan, 1936), p. 108. See also the version of "Go Tell Aunt Nancy" in A Singer and her Songs: Almeda Riddle's Book of Ballads, ed. Roger D. Abrahams (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ., 1970), pp. 117-20. This text suggests that the Marster-John story might at one point have been a cante-fable, and from this emerged a work song....

[That's as much as I can get with Google Book Search.]