G. K. Chesterton wrote of the poem as a "beggars' rhyme" during his childhood in late nineteenth-century London, and quoted the words as thus: Here comes a poor soldier from Botany Bay: What have you got to give him to-day?[REF] .
Books of children's games published at the turn of the century show that by the 1890s the rhyme had developed into a game of taboo words [REF].