Folklore: toadskin?

Subject: Folklore: toadskin?
From: Forsh
Date: 17 Sep 06 - 07:38 PM

In that song, 4 litle johnie cakes, he's got a toad skin in his pocket, that he borrowed off a friend.. why? what is it? what is it for? or have I got the wrong lyric?

Subject: RE: Folklore: toadskin?
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 17 Sep 06 - 07:51 PM

archaic slang for money, in particular, paper currency.

I had the answer right off, but it was surprisingly difficult to find documentation (meaning it took a few minutes rather than seconds ;-).


"Well, you aren't so awful old, and when I get to be as old as you, Daniel will be eighty. Seth Kendall's grandfather isn't more than that, and he has to be fed with a spoon, and a nurse puts him to bed, and wheels him round in a chair like a baby. That takes the stamps, I bet! Well, I tell you how I'll keep my accounts: I'll have a stick like Robinson Crusoe, and every time I make a toadskin I'll gouge a piece out of one side of the stick, and every time I spend one I'll gouge a piece out of the other."

"Spend a what?" said the gentle and astonished voice of my sister Lu, who, unperceived, had slipped into the room.

"A toadskin, ma," replied Billy, shutting up Oolburn with a farewell glance of contempt. "Why, ma, don't you know what a toadskin is? Here's one," said Billy, drawing a dingy five-cent stamp from his pocket. "And don't I wish I had lots of 'em!"

"Oh!" sighed his mother, "to think I should have a child so addicted to slang! How I wish he were like Daniel!"

-- From "�Little Brother, and Other Genre Pictures"
Robert Jones Burdette

Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.

Subject: RE: Folklore: toadskin?
From: frogprince
Date: 17 Sep 06 - 08:21 PM

Fascinatin': The story has to be referring to currency in a way I've never heard, and I've read piles of archaic literature. Either the implication is that there was once such a thing as a 5-cent paper bill, or "Billy" is referring to a "stamped" coin as a "stamp". If a metal nickel is being referred to as a "toadskin", I wonder if that usage has ever existed outside the particular author's imagination? That expression for paper money is much easier to understand.

Subject: RE: Folklore: toadskin?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 17 Sep 06 - 09:18 PM

"Toadskin' is an old slang name for paper money (U. S.).
I think the term was first used during the Civil War, but I don't have a proper reference.

The United States issued fractional paper currency in denominations of 3 cents to 50 cents; in slang, 'shinplasters'. (They are still redeemable). During the Civil War, there was a shortage of coin, and even stamps were used as small change.

Subject: RE: Folklore: toadskin?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 17 Sep 06 - 09:40 PM

Fractional currency, first issue 1862; 5, 10, 25 and 50 cent notes. Three cent (Washington portrait) and 15 cent notes first issued in 1863.The five cent had a picture of Jefferson, as used on the five cent stamp, and the note "receivable for postage stamps at any US post office." I'dont remember the year of issue, but I have a couple of 25 cent notes with Martha Washington's portrait.

These notes are illustrated here: Fractional Currency

To collectors, these shinplasters are worth more than face value. I have loaned out my catalogue, so can't tell you the values. Condition is very important.

Subject: RE: Folklore: toadskin?
From: GUEST,Rowan
Date: 17 Sep 06 - 09:45 PM

The song "Four Little Johnny Cakes" is well known in Australian folk music and, without recourse to documentation, I'd suggest it may postdate both the Victorian goldrushes (1850 onwards) and the American Civil War. There were lots of Americans on the Victorian goldfields (some even in the Eureka events at Ballarat) so the American use of 'toadskin' could have arrived with them. Gold miners in the nineteenth Century were an extremely peripatetic lot and several individuals in the ancestry of my offspring appeared in the US, NZ, and Africa, as well as Australia, having originated in the British Isles.

Many negro/AfroAmerican entertainers were cut out of performing minstrel shows in America after the Civil War and, instead, went to Australia to perform 'whiteface blacking up to do blackface' minstrel shows around the countryside; they were extremely popular. So the American usage of 'toadskin' could have arrived in Australia with the minstrel shows.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: Folklore: toadskin?
From: GUEST,DrWord
Date: 17 Sep 06 - 11:01 PM

my failing memory ... maybe Lakota, but an old Sioux in [perhaps the book Hanta Yo?] invariably referred to American paper dollars as "green frog skins" and always with the implication that they were at par value, to him.
thanks 4 the folkloric post ~ AND the responses

peace,
dennis
Oak in the Acorn

Subject: RE: Folklore: toadskin?
From: open mike
Date: 18 Sep 06 - 12:31 AM

yes i think i have heard frogskin too, as a native term.
perhaps from a book, "Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions"

also known as "dead presidents" as the U.S. bills have
their portraits on them

Subject: RE: Folklore: toadskin?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 18 Sep 06 - 01:30 AM

Lighter, Historical Dictionary of American Slang- Earliest quote for 'frogskin is 1902. "Dialect Notes 2"- "Frogskins is used in Virginia for paper money or 'greenbacks'". Usually applied now to the one-dollar bill, but also used in the plural for money. 'Frogskins' was used by Hollywood in their horse operas with trapper and Indian characters and entered general speech.

"Greenback" was applied to Demand notes ($1 value) which were first produced in 1861, and appeared in the Century Dictionary in the 1880's. It possibly was used during the Civil War but no definite citations found yet. U. S. currency is green on the reverse side and black and gray on the obverse.

Subject: RE: Folklore: toadskin?
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 18 Sep 06 - 05:12 AM

G'day Q,

The earliest reference to the Four Little Johnny Cakes is actually to Three Little Johnny Cakes ... Ron Edwards's Australian Folk Song Index gives:

1. The Bulletin, 9 April 1898 printed the chorus of the song as sent in by "6 x 8" with a note
"Here's one old whaler's rhyme well known on all Australian rivers". Reprinted Australian Tradition
16/13 June 1968.
Little tea and sugar-bag looking nice and plump,
Three little johnny-cakes standing on a stump,
Two little cod-fish hanging on the line,
Here's to a whaler's life and Auld Lang Syne!

I don't have the rest of the text, so I can't be sure that the term "toadskin" is used, but this establishes that the song was considered "old" in 1898. The Australan National Dictionary has only a citation of this song in its entry for "toadskin" - so it may have been relatively uncommon - and only preserved by this one instance. This suggests that any period of common use was well back - such as the height of the Gold Rush era. This certainly would fit in with the suggestion that the term is a borrowing from American usage.

In the Us, the term may be generic across a range of denominations ... but we would have only used it for the one-pound note - the only one that was green. (The ten-pound note was a reddish brown colour ... and I can remember them being called "bricks" - once again, because of their colour.

Regards,

Bob (Who did post the £1 definition to a Mudcat thread about this song ... in the reasonably recent past ...)

Subject: RE: Folklore: toadskin?
From: Hrothgar
Date: 19 Sep 06 - 05:02 AM

An Australian ten shilling note (and, after the introduction of decimal currency, the equivalent one dollar note) - because of its brown colour.

In the days when shearers earned a pound a hundred, ten bob would have been handy.

Subject: RE: Folklore: toadskin?
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 19 Sep 06 - 06:54 PM

G'day Hrothgar,

I never heard any slang term for the Australian ten shilling note - but I did hear the term "brick" for the bigger (and somewhat browner ... ?) £10 note ... even if I didn't get to handle many of them!

I never heard anyone actually use "toadskin" for any of our banknotes ... but the usual comment on the term, in Four Little Johnny Cakes was that it was the pound - and that from the green colour. Of course, we weren't talking about cane toads ... back then!

Regards,

Bob

Subject: RE: Folklore: toadskin?
From: GUEST,Forsh (at Work)
Date: 19 Sep 06 - 07:06 PM

Thanks Folkies,
So, probably and Possibly US origines, in one way or another, but undoubtably referring to money, Right?
Forsh (at Work):)>

Subject: RE: Folklore: toadskin?
From: GUEST,Rowan
Date: 19 Sep 06 - 07:51 PM

I've never heard of any slang terms for "ten bob notes" either. A pound was usually a "quid" and often used in the sense of "not the full quid" for someone who was only 19/6 ("nineteen & six in the pound") ie 'not all there'. These days a similar sense is expressed as "not the sharpest knife in the drawer" or "not the brightest crayon in the box".

Australian slang was replete with terms for coins;
trey = threepence (often pronounced thruppence, rhyming with tuppence* for twopence)
zac = sixpence
deena = shilling (20 to make the full quid and 21 to make a guinea)
crown or dollar = five shillings, although neither coin has been used for yonks.

So "toadskin" in Australia would certainly refer to a paper item of currency but I doubt the usage ever applied to a 10 bob note; if it did, that usage was extremely restricted.

* hence the Australian diggers' song from WW1

I've got sixpence, jolly little sixpence,
I've got sixpence, to last me all my life.
I've got tuppence to lend
and tuppence to spend
and tuppence to send home to my wife.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: Folklore: toadskin?
From: Effsee
Date: 19 Sep 06 - 10:16 PM

"I've got sixpence, jolly little sixpence,
I've got sixpence, to last me all my life.
I've got tuppence to lend
and tuppence to spend
and tuppence to send home to my wife."

That's no more Australian than God save the Queen!

Subject: RE: Folklore: toadskin?
From: GUEST,Rowan
Date: 19 Sep 06 - 11:35 PM

Greetings Effsee.

By using the phrase "the Australian diggers' song" I'm referring to the notion that the song was sung by Australian diggers rather than to any notion of putative origin as in "no more Australian than God save the Queen!" Not having been there (and without recourse to documentation) I can only assume it was also sung by soldiers from other parts of the Empire that used sixpenny bits (and real pennies) as currency. That's my two cents' worth.

For a similar reason, in my first post on this thread I wrote "The song "Four Little Johnny Cakes" is well known in Australian folk music" rather than "The song .... is a folk song that originated in Australia." The first proposition is undeniable; the second is widely assumed but I don't have the cast iron evidence required to prove it to the various bush lawyers ready to pounce.

Cheers, Rowan