Sally' statement is that it is a well-worn phrase with a meaning and is used elsewhere other than shanties so if its name crops up at random it doesn't necessarily mean it is anything to do with the shanty of that name. I think that it is unclear which way the influences went on this song. It could just as easily have gone from chanty to blackface minstrel. Emmett wrote his song "Ole Aunt Sally", which contains the single line in the chorus about "round the corner, Sally", in 1843, and we have at least one earlier reference to the chanty (1839) that assumes that it has been out there for a while (Reynolds). Absolutely, the direction of influence between the different sources is a minefield. In most cases I would imagine influences were flying back and forth between the different genres at quite a rate. Some channels of influence are more obvious than others. African-American culture parodied/utilised in minstrel genre. Land-based work song on water-based worksong. Once the minstrel craze took off - universal influence. To mention but a few. I'd like to begin pulling together the references to stuff going on in the 1840s. This means culling from posts already made. Well, here goes a start. To begin with rowing songs again. This was posted by Lighter, 1 March 2010. I hope my copy-pasting is not objectionable; I prefer to do that rather than link, here, so we can see all the texts in one place. // The