>Robinson, I've remembered however, quoted extensively from Meloney...and author that repeated Masefield's stuff without acknowledgement. So though Robinson was an experienced chanty singer with much original information to offer, he did also "adjust" some of his chanties based on what he'd been able to read by 1917.

Very dismaying. OTOH, Robinson seems to have had no motive to misrepresent wht he knew. So I'd hope that most of what he repeated from print must have resembled very closely something he'd heard.

I suppose that an unusually nice stanza might be an exception, but are there any like that?