Chloe's Blog

Nursery Rhymes History
“Mary, Mary quite contrary.
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockleshells.
And all pretty maids in a row.”

Seems like an innocent nursery rhyme right? Think again. This rhyme is reputed to be Mary Tudor, or Bloody Mary. Queen Mary was a huge believer in the Catholic religion and the garden referred to is really a lot of graveyards which were increasing in size with those who dared to continue to practice the Protestant faith. The silver bells and cockle shells referred to instruments of torture. The ‘silver bells’ were thumbscrews which crushed the thumb between two hard surfaces by the tightening of a screw. The cockleshells were believed to be instruments of torture which were attached to the genitals. The maids were a device to behead people called the Maiden. Beheading a victim was fraught with problems. It could take up to 11 blows to actually sever the head, the victim often resisted and had to be chased around the scaffold.
“Half a pound of tuppenny rice,
Half a pound of treacle.
That’s the way the money goes,
Pop! goes the weasel.
Up and down the City road,
In and out the Eagle,
That’s the way the money goes,
Pop! goes the weasel.”

The Nursery Rhyme, ‘Pop goes the weasel’ sounds hard to understand in this day and age! The origins of the rhyme take back to the 1700’s. These words are derived from Cockney Rhyming slang which originated in London. Cockneys were a close community and had a suspicion of strangers and a dislike of the Police Cockneys developed a language of their own based roughly on a rhyming slang – it was difficult for strangers to understand as invariably the second noun would always be dropped. Apples and Pears would be abbreviated to just ‘apples’, for instance, “watch your step on the apples”. To “Pop” is the slang word for “Pawn”. Weasel is derived from “weasel and stoat” meaning coat. It was traditional for even poor people to own a suit, which they wore as their ‘Sunday Best’. When times were hard they would pawn their suit, or coat, on a Monday and claim it back before Sunday. Hence the term ” Pop goes the Weasel”. The words to the Rhyme are “Up and down the City road, in and out the Eagle –
That’s the way the money goes – Pop! goes the weasel”. The Eagle refers to ‘The Eagle Tavern’ a pub which is located on the corner of City Road and Shepherdess Walk in Hackney, North London.
“ Georgie Porgie pudding and pie,
Kissed the girls and made them cry
When the boys came out to play,
Georgie Porgie ran away. “

The origins of the lyrics to “Georgie Porgie” are English and refer to the courtier George Villiers, 1st duke of Duke of Buckingham. King James I took Villiers as his lover and nicknamed him “Steenie”. Villier’s good looks also appealed to the ladies and his highly suspect morals were much in question! Villiers most notorious affair was with his liaison with Anne of Austria, who was the Queen of France and married to the French King Louis XIII badly injured both of their reputations. This, however, was overlooked due to his great friendship with the English King, James I. He was disliked by both courtiers and commoners, not least for helping to arrange the marriage of King James’ son to the French Catholic princess Henrietta Maria – he later became King Charles I. Villiers private liaisons and political scheming were questioned and Parliament who finally lost patience and stopped the King intervening on behalf of “Georgie Porgie”.

RESOURCES :
http://www.rhymes.org.uk
/http://www.rhymes.org.uk/a116a-pop-goes-the-weasel.htm
http://www.rhymes.org.uk/georgie_porgie.htm