If Karrie is still around (March 09) your reference to the old journal version would have been extremely helpful here had you given us at least a rough date when it was written.

Going by other postings it would appear to predate the opening of the Ship Canal and the sinking of the Lusitania (1912), although a Lusitania version did definitely exist.

The tune is also used for a much older children's singing game 'Old Roger is Dead' and then of course it was adopted in WWI for the words of 'The Old Barbed Wire'.