Evening World (N.Y.C.)(June 9 1906), p. 6 [without explanation]:

"'Aha!' she cried, in accents wild,
And waved her wooden leg."


Chicago Tribune (June 15, 2003),III p. 13:

"'Aha, she said with glee, as she shook her wooden leg at me,' was my father's favorite saying."

Coincidence?:
Evening Post (Charleston, S.C.) (Oct. 17, 1900), p. 5:

"Sarah Richardson, who has one leg, a lemon complexion, and one eye, was shot in her good leg last night by a negro known as 'Black Horse.' ...The shooting occurred on Beaufontain street, in that quarter of the city where red lights and red curtains are in evidence all night long....[W]hen the shot was fired...Sarah Ann fell to the ground and wildly waved her wooden leg...."

The ultimate inspiration for the parodic lines appears to be the poem, "On the Death of Mrs. Blake, who perished with cold in December 1821, on the Green Mountains of Vermont near the town of Arlington," by "Memnon.

Its first known appearance was in the "Eastern Argus" of Portland, Maine, March 12, 1822. The tearful verses were often reprinted in American newspapers during the nineteenth century:

"Oh, God," she cried in accents wild,
"If I must perish, save my child!"

And God does.