I missed a comment made by Gilchrist which would put the date of This Old Man as sung today in the UK back at any rate to the First World War period, so we now have at least anecdotal evidence, though not yet details (see below). My earlier comments should be revised in the light of that; an American import or re-import now seems much less likely. Here is Jack Jintle, as printed in The Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society:



JACK JINTLE

(From Elizabeth Piercy, Manchester, 1870s. Noted by Anne G. Gilchrist)

My name is Jack Jintle, the eldest but one,
And I can play nick-nack upon my own thumb.
With my nick-nack and pad-lock and sing a fine song,
And all the fine ladies come dancing along.

My name is Jack Jintle, the eldest but two,
And I can play nick-nack upon my own shoe.
With my nick-nack, etc.

(As before, substituting "three" and "knee", "four" and "floor").


X:1
T:Jack Jintle
T:(An old Action Song)
S:Elizabeth Piercy, Manchester, 1870s. Noted by Anne G. Gilchrist.
B:Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, III (2) 1937 124-5.
L:1/8
Q:1/4=100
M:6/8
K:D
A|D F A D F A|D F A d2 B|
w:My name is Jack Jin-tle, the eld-est but one, And
A F F F E D|C E E E2||
w:I can play nick-nack up-on my own thumb.
"Refrain"F/ E/|D F A D F A|D F A d2 G|
w:With my nick-nack and pad-lock and sing a fine song, And
F E F E A G|F D D D2|]
w:all the fine la-dies come danc-ing a-long.


Miss Gilchrist added:

"The rest is forgotten, but the numbers probably went up to ten. In the first verse the singer, suiting the action to the word, rapped with her knuckle on her thumb; in the second rapped on the sole of her shoe; in the third on her knee, and so on. Elizabeth Piercy was our Welsh nursemaid and illiterate when she came to us at the age of seventeen. She was a good singer, but one could make no sense of some of her scraps of English songs, though she sang well in Welsh and taught me to sing songs in that language.

"This old action-song, belonging to the day before such things were introduced into the school curriculum, is here printed in the hope that it may elicit other variants which may help to elucidate its origin. It belongs to the cumulative class of which This old man came rolling home is a war-time route march specimen. The only other version I have seen of Jack Jintle is set to the tune of the Italian Montferina - a dance-tune much used for nursery-songs and games since it came to England in 1810. Mr. Kidson's version is a stick-dance, but arrangd as such by himself - many of his games being adaptations. The 'nick-nack' may perhaps provide a clue. In the ballad of Burd Isabel and Earl Patrick occurs the verse:

"The Knichts they knack their white fingers,
The ladies sat and sang,
'Twas a' to cheer bonnie Burd Bell,
She was far sunk in pain.

"This suggests some finger-trick more than mere snapping. 'Knackers' is an old name for castanets or wooden 'bones'. Strutt quotes under Fool's Dance an allusion (1649) to a person dancing the Spanish morisco with 'knackers' at his fingers.

"A variant of the same tune was known in our nursery days to a child song As Tommy was walking one fine summer day."

-Anne Geddes Gilchrist, Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, III (2) 1937 124-5.