(continued)

Narratives of "The Wellerman" circulating in recent media appear to often make the assumption that the subject matter of a song spells its origin. (Extrapolated farther, that's why the unfamiliar audience is wont to take a song that is about the sea [or makes them feel like "sea" somehow!] and connect it with "sea shanty" without much regard for form, time period, etc.) "The Wellerman" being about the Weller Bros. whaling enterprise in the 1830s, narrators want to make it a song sung *by* people engaged in that enterprise, or, something a close as possible to it.

I interpret this tendency in the précis at the folksong.org.nz website, which classifies "Wellerman" under "Shanties; Songs handed down from old times" and dates it as "1860s".

https://folksong.org.nz/shanties.html

How do they get 1860s?

It starts with the (unstated) assumption that the song *must* have been much older than the 1960s folk revival. After all, who would ever write a new song about an historical topic? (*sarcasm*)

They say Colquhoun "collected" the song from Frank Woods. Woods was in his 80s at the time. Implies that Woods was born about 1880-1889. Woods learned "Wellerman" and "John Smith, AB" from his "uncle."

And so, they try to see how old can they make the "uncle" be, so as to (hopefully) make it possible for the uncle to have been an actual whalerman in the 1830s. Working from the other direction, they reason that the "uncle" could have been born in 1820 and still have been a teenager, conceivably working, when the Weller company was around.

(I don't know whose uncle is 60-70 years older than them, especially in the 19th century??? But OK.)

They previously* tried to flesh out details as such: Noting that the 1904 Sydney Bulletin publication of "John Smith, AB" was attributed to "D.H. Rogers," and that Frank Woods learned both Wellerman and John Smith from the same uncle, maybe DH Rogers was the uncle? (This seems an admission of unilinear transmission!)

Thus, DH Rogers, hypothetically born in 1820, working as a whaleman in the 1830s, and at 84 years old singing "John Smith" (and secretly knowing "The Wellerman") in 1904 creates what seems like a solid rationale for dating "The Wellerman" to "old times."

To be fair, the people at folksong.org.nz do not say this, at least not explicitly—their puzzling dating of "1860s" however, I don't understand. Rather, Google'ers (including news article writers) in early 2021 found their site and comfortably concluded it was cool to say "Wellerman" went back to those old times. Wikipedia authors did the same -- this time citing the news article writers who did the "research" of finding the folksongs.org.nz website.

*Am I imagining things, however, or did folksongs.org.nz update their site in the last few months? In January, they included the précis I've been discussing, which was reproduced by user vectis earlier in this thread. Now, however, they have added the find that "D.H. Rogers" (of Sydney Bulletin fame) lived 1865-1933 -- making it impossible for him to have been an original whaleman. I personally don't see how this rules him out as a source for "Wellerman" or as the uncle of Frank Woods. But for a reason I don't understand, they rule out the possibility that he could have composed "Wellerman."
https://folksong.org.nz/soon_may_the_wellerman/index.html

to be continued...