With regard to the verse from "Limber Jim", there are two things to remember. First of all, even though the song was collected in the Piedmont area of North Carolina in 1939 (Elon College), the lady, Mrs. Patty Newman, who sang it for Fletcher Collins, had lived in Missouri for the first nineteen years of her life, and had attended Antioch College in Ohio. Secondly, the only known precedent for this song that we've discovered so far was collected by Lafcadio Hearn on the wharf in Cincinnati, "on the banks of the Ohio". Hearn published this version of "Limber Jim" in 1876 and Mrs. Newman can be dated back to 1870. As we have discussed in the other thread, the song may have originated on the rivers - Mississippi/Ohio, which would tie it in with Huck and Tom and their use of "taw". Mrs. Newman may have carried it back to North Carolina with her when she married and returned home to live there.