As someone who was a kid later than that, it was always “tiger.” It’s how our mom taught it to us when we were little and how we always said it to determine who was “It” when we were playing hide & seek and other kids’ games or to decide who got the last cupcake.
The rhyme really only makes sense with the original word, since tigers rarely carry cash.
A lot of kids’ rhymes don’t make much sense. Fortunately, we never worried much about things like that. 😏
Yes, it went from one word to another after I grew out of using choosing rhymes and it’s not a bad thing that it did. When the rhyme began, which was when slavery still existed, the replaced word was in common use and its use shocked no one. But even back then it was considered ‘impolite’ to say the least.
Doris Kearns Goodwin in her book ‘Team of Rivals’ has one pre-Civil War politician saying about another, “Anyone who pronounces Negro with two Gs will never be President.”
Hearing the rhyme with ‘tiger’ just sounds wrong to my ear. Kind of like the shift from ‘Easy Peasy Japanesie’ to ‘Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezie’.
Thing is I don’t remember learning the rhyme from my parents but rather other kids. Another one I heard was ‘Whistle while you work, Hitler is a jerk, Mussolini bit his wienie, now it doesn’t work”. An early Simpsons episode did feature a somewhat censored version.