Here Comes an Old Soldier from Botany Bay

Here Comes an Old Soldier from Botany Bay, commonly known as Here Comes an Old Soldier or just Old Soldier, is a nursery rhyme and children's game found in Australia, the United States, and the British Isles. The game and rhyme date to at least the late nineteenth century.^[1]

Lyrics

Here comes an old soldier from Botany Bay,
Have you got anything to give him to-day.

Origin and Variations

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?^[1]

1. ^ G.K. Chesterton, The Illustrated London News, December 22, 1934.

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.^[1][2][3]

Various other games incorporating the rhyme emerged in the twentieth century, most notably a slew of local adaptations that replaced the "old soldier from Botany Bay" with an "old woman from Botany Bay."^[4]

References in other works

The game is mentioned in Keble Howard's 1908 book "Miss Charity: A Tale From My Heart"^[5]

The poet Mary Finnin has written a ballad entitled "Here Comes an Old Soldier from Botany Bay".^[6]

References

1. George Laurence Gomme, A Dictionary of British Folklore, (London: David Nutt, 1898), 24.
2. Joseph Wright, The English Dialect Dictionary, (London: Henry Frowde, 1898), 339.
3. Edward Verrall and Elizabeth Lucas, What Shall We Do Now?: A Book of Suggestions for Children's Games and Employments, (London: Grant Richards, 1900), 10.
4. Dorothy Howard, "Folklore of Australian Children", Keystone Folklore Quarterly 10, no. 1 (Spring, 1965): 103-104 & 115.
5. K. Howard, Miss Charity: A Tale from My Heart (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1908), p. 107.
6. L. J. Blake, Australian Writers, (Rigby, 1968), p. 217.