"Watter" is still a common pronounciation throughout Yorkshire (so by no means confined to the North East); earlier it will have been more widespread. "Small beer" was not just for children; everybody drank it (as earlier stated, it was safer than water); but they often complained that it wasn't stronger, so some things have not much changed from that time to this!

Baring Gould printed two texts in A Garland of Country Song (1895); one, described as up to date, began

There were three jovial fellows
With lungs as blacksmith's bellows
Sat drinking until mellow
Believe me, this was true.

The other began

There were three jovial fellows,
They all went out a drinking
They all went out a drinking
To make a jovial crew.

Claude M. Simpson (The British Broadside Ballad and Its Music, 1966) :

The ballad Jones ale is newe was licensed in 1594, along with what seems like a moralizing counterpart, the vnthriftes adiew to Jones ale is newe. The original ballad was re-entered in the Stationers' Register in 1656, to Thomas Vere....

The 1680 broadside text quoted above appeared in Pills to Purge Melancholy (1719-20; vol.V p.61), with tune, as The Jovial Tinker.