G'day Q,

The earliest reference to the Four Little Johnny Cakes is actually to Three Little Johnny Cakes ... Ron Edwards's Australian Folk Song Index gives:

1. The Bulletin, 9 April 1898 printed the chorus of the song as sent in by "6 x 8" with a note
"Here's one old whaler's rhyme well known on all Australian rivers". Reprinted Australian Tradition
16/13 June 1968.
Little tea and sugar-bag looking nice and plump,
Three little johnny-cakes standing on a stump,
Two little cod-fish hanging on the line,
Here's to a whaler's life and Auld Lang Syne!

I don't have the rest of the text, so I can't be sure that the term "toadskin" is used, but this establishes that the song was considered "old" in 1898. The Australan National Dictionary has only a citation of this song in its entry for "toadskin" - so it may have been relatively uncommon - and only preserved by this one instance. This suggests that any period of common use was well back - such as the height of the Gold Rush era. This certainly would fit in with the suggestion that the term is a borrowing from American usage.

In the Us, the term may be generic across a range of denominations ... but we would have only used it for the one-pound note - the only one that was green. (The ten-pound note was a reddish brown colour ... and I can remember them being called "bricks" - once again, because of their colour.

Regards,

Bob (Who did post the £1 definition to a Mudcat thread about this song ... in the reasonably recent past ...)