Here's a question I find even more puzzling than how Jim acquired the adjective "buck-eye":

Why couldn't he go weave and/or spin?

Annamill wondered, early on in this thread, whether this started out as a game song. It might very well of been.

I have no evidence of this, of course. But I can easily imagine a game where one child was chosen to play the role of "Jim" and the other children try to prevent him/her from reaching a destination. In the game "Dog-flea bite", for example, the child chosen to play the flea tries to break through the ring of children which are holding hands around him/her.

So here's the next question: Why did Lomax call this song a lullaby? How did he decide to catorgorize songs?