The song "Four Little Johnny Cakes" is well known in Australian folk music and, without recourse to documentation, I'd suggest it may postdate both the Victorian goldrushes (1850 onwards) and the American Civil War. There were lots of Americans on the Victorian goldfields (some even in the Eureka events at Ballarat) so the American use of 'toadskin' could have arrived with them. Gold miners in the nineteenth Century were an extremely peripatetic lot and several individuals in the ancestry of my offspring appeared in the US, NZ, and Africa, as well as Australia, having originated in the British Isles. Many negro/AfroAmerican entertainers were cut out of performing minstrel shows in America after the Civil War and, instead, went to Australia to perform 'whiteface blacking up to do blackface' minstrel shows around the countryside; they were extremely popular. So the American usage of 'toadskin' could have arrived in Australia with the minstrel shows. Cheers, Rowan
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