There's something about this song that doesn't ring true for me. The sentimental attachment to the "Blue Mountains of Tennessee" sounds very post-minstrel, very 1890s or even later. The rest seems more believable - though the abundant internal rhymes of the last stanza seem awfully self-conscious.

Is this Harlow's unreliable reconstruction, in the 1920s or later, of something he only dimly remembered? It would seem so. What's this business about "These words are of negro origin and different from those used by our crew"? If they weren't used by the crew, where'd he get them? What does "negro origin" mean here, exactly?

I don't want to think about it.