This song was quite popular aboard early 1800s packet ships. Liza Lee is the name of another tune of unrelated melody.
Captain Whall, Sea Songs and Shanties, traces this song to a minstrel ditty with chorus:
Walkee up, O walkee up, O walkee up, O way
Walk into de parlor for to hear de banjo play!
but other authors have suggested the melody and the phrase "low-back" jaunting car support an origin in the Irish folk-song "Shule Agra." One plausible explanation for this cross-cultural origin is based around New Orleans and other Gulf ports: black and Creole stevedores may have heard some Irish seamen humming Irish ditties. The cargo-loaders' wording would then have been added to supplement the cotton pressing work, and visiting seamen apparently took the songs for use at capstan and halyards.
The Margaret Evans was a well-known American packet-ship built in 1846 by Westervelt & MacKay. She sailed in and out of Liverpool, London, and New York, apparently for Grinnell, Minturn & Co.'s Swallowtail Line and before making her way to Griswold's Black "X" Line. Stan Hugill's version offers instead the Wild Cat of the Swallowtail line.
"Bullgine" was American slang for steam engine.
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Oh, the smartest clipper you can find
Ch: Ah-hee, ah-ho, are you most done,
Is the Marg'ret Evans of the Black X Line
Ch: So clear away the track, let the Bull-gine run!
Tibby hey-rig-a-jig in a jaunting car
Ch: Ah-hee, ah-ho, are you most done,
With Lizer Lee all on my knee
Ch: So clear away the track, let the Bull-gine run!
Oh the Marget Evans of the Blue Cross Line
She's never a day behind her time.
Oh the gels are walking on the pier,
And I'll soon be home to you my dear.
Oh, when I come home across the sea,
It's Lizer you will marry me.
Oh shake her, wake her, before we're ghone;
Oh fetch that gel with the blue dress on.
Oh I thought I heard the skipper say,
"We'll keep the brig three points away."
Oh the smartest clipper you can find
Is the Marget Evans of the Blue Cross Line.
From The Shanty Book by Richard Runciman Terry (1921 and 1926)