The musician and folklorist A.L. Lloyd had this to say about a song called My Barney, recorded by The Watersons on their album For Pence And Spicy Ale:

"A stage song favoured by Irish comedians from the 1860s on.  During the 1880s, apparantly on American University campuses, close-harmony groups remade it into the better-known -and even more preposterous- My Bonny Lies Over The Ocean.  (The) Watersons had this from Bob Davenport who learned it from a Frank Quinn 78."

Malcolm