Here's a version of this song, written down by the detective writer Ngaio Marsh. She heard it sung by drunken revellers on a night train on New Zealand's West Coast, Easter 1919:

Have you ever seen the devil with his little pick and shovel,
Digging of pertaters with his tail cocked up?

Have you ever seen his son with his daddy's gun
Shooting little bunnies with their tails cocked up?

Have you ever seen his wife with a carving knife
Cutting up pertaters with her tail cocked up?

[Have you] ever seen his daughter with a bucket gettin' water
From the well that's in the garden with her tail cocked up?


From 'Black Beech and Honeydew' (Auckland: William Colling, 1966), pp.105-106.

Many Irish emigrants settled on the West Coast and perhaps they brought this song with them to NZ. Or perhaps there is a Cornwall connection (cf. Hunt's 'Popular Romances of the West of England'), as some Cornish miners also worked in West Coast coal mines.