SusanB, your book about children's game songs from England is great news! Given your question about this song, will your book include information about the origin of these songs? If so, double Yeah!!

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For what it's worth, I've found that children often change certain words of songs & rhymes to try to make the lyrics of a song make more sense to them. The line "sailing east, sailing west" reminds me of the "turn to the east and turn to the west" line that is found in lots of children's game songs. I suppose that the word "sailing" was substituted for the word "turn" since that made more sense in association with the "a-travelling, boys, all the world over" theme.