I have a story about the French version. We posted it on Mama Lisa's World some time in 2008. In Jan. 2012, I got an email from a lady saying she'd written, composed and registered it in 1961 along with other kids songs and she'd like us to give credits to her on our page, which we did. After I sent her a link to Peggy Seeger's songbook "American Folk Songs for Children" and a book published in 1910 where the song is mentioned as "classical" (then more or less "old") showing the song had existed in English for soooooooome time, she was amazed and she assured she'd never heard of it before, she told me all the when-where... she'd written it and I felt she was sincere. Le mystère reste entier.