Amos--

I am sure...

You missed the part where I said that there is only one reputable source that has anything like "Santa Ana." It has "santee ... Annie." I have probably looked at as many or more documented versions of this song as anybody, and them's the not-so-exciting results.

All the evidence points to something else being sung originally. It is plausible that somebody who heard that "something else" was thinking "Santa Ana" and so turned it into "santee---Annie". But this random misunderstanding only yielded the one documented version (Whall)—and Whall makes no note he was thinking of "Santa Ana." "Santa Ana" being a popular character in songs is a truism that, given the evidence we have, appears to have no relevance to the origin of this chanty.

But then Hugill comes along. If he had not read Whall's version, there is a great chance he'd have never had any cause to speculate about "Santa Ana." "Santa Ana" would never be on the table in the first place, and we wouldn't be talking about it. I challenge you NOT to think about a monkey.

This is a repeated pattern in the chanty discourse. Some early 20th non-historian produces a random variation or throws in a fun idea. Then that is all churned up in Hugill's book like "And BTW FWIW IIRC, so and so uncritiqued or unnamed source says *this*.... Just sayin'!" Then people read the Hugill as the Bible (or one of its offshoots)...the guy was blessed with a lovable personality, ...do a little "folk process" in their minds (= taking the Folkie equivalent of a roofie) such that what they read in that book becomes what they seem to remember they "heard." When some one asks for proof of what they "heard," Hugill's book is produced and it appears to corroborate the information. I did this once as a kid with my friend and a Quija board. We asked the Quija a question, and I pushed it to the answer I knew was in a book I owned. Then I of course produced the book and my friend got some nice chills down his spine...Whoah, the Spirit had actually spoken!

Seen it a hundred times... Jack Ketch the Hanging Johnny, A-roving to the Rape of Lucrece, the Elizabethan Bowline haul, the 'Blood' Red Roses, the British sailors that loved the Mexican Army, the 19th century Scots lament of Lowlands, Hunting for Huckleberries in Maine, The endless punishments of the Drunken Sailor and the Captain's Daughter and her Cat 'o' Nine, Black Ball officers blowing men down, Yankee slave ships going down the Congo River, Irish Wild Geese, Samoan refrains, Dutch 'hoeker' boats, Sicilian Ranzos... Someone oughta make a Snopes.com for this stuff =)