I agree, Lighter. I'm certainly not ready to conclude anything about "Drunken Sailor" from Smith's funny footnote! Although to thicken the plot [off topic]: Bullen gives lyrics to "Drunken Sailor" that are written in dialect that I think is meant to be read as "Black" dialect. Again, I don't think this necessarily says anything about the "origins" of the song in general, but it is interesting so far as (I think) "Drunken Sailor" is typically thought of as a pretty well established "Anglo" song, and yet these two folks experienced it (it seems) in a way that led them to "mark" it as Afro-American.

To be clear, I'm not operating under any agenda to see "Drunken Sailor" as African-American. I do, however, see "Bunch of Roses" as (so far as the concept of "origins" is reasonably used) African-American[/Caribbean] originally.