More About Nursery Rhymes

I'VE DONE SOME MORE RESEARCH on the nursery rhymes posted yesterday. (This is one of those days when weblogging's reverse-chronological sequencing really makes no sense. But anyway ...)

To start off: this is how the BBC's website describes the game of oranges and lemons - better than I did. (I don't remember ever deciding to be an "orange" or a "lemon", incidentally; but maybe that's my bad memory.)

Oranges and Lemons
The Actions:

A group of children decide to play 'Oranges and Lemons'. Two children become the 'chopper' by holding hands and forming an arch. They secretly decide which one of them is 'Oranges' and which one is 'Lemons'.

The other children go through the arch in a line, circling round behind the arch, and going through again, singing the rhyme as they go. At the last line of the rhyme the 'choppers' bring their arms up and down in a chopping motion over each child that goes through. The game can get quite nerve-racking for the children at this point, and they often run through as fast as they can. The child caught in the middle at the last word of the rhyme is out.

The captured child secretly chooses to be Oranges or Lemons, and then moves around to stand behind that child forming the arch. When all the children have been captured, the teams have a tug of war. The winning team is the one left standing, but usually none of the children are by the end.
Incidentally, their version of the rhyme ends with this line:

Chop chop chop chop the last man's head!

Which makes a treble repeated rhyme. Definitely not the version I knew.

Also, the version we used to play had at least three choppers lined up so the poor kid going through had to run the gauntlet of chopping ...

Ruth knows a version with far more bells (which waters down the sinisterness also):

"Oranges and Lemons" say the Bells of St. Clements
"Bullseyes and Targets" say the Bells of St. Margaret's
"Brickbats and Tiles" say the Bells of St. Giles
"Halfpence and Farthings" say the Bells of St. Martin's
"Pancakes and Fritters" say the Bells of St. Peter's
"Two Sticks and an Apple" say the Bells of Whitechapel
"Maids in white aprons" say the Bells at St. Katherine's
"Pokers and Tongs" say the Bells of St. John's
"Kettles and Pans" say the Bells of St. Anne's
"Old Father Baldpate" say the slow Bells of Aldgate
"You owe me Ten Shillings" say the Bells of St. Helen's
"When will you Pay me?" say the Bells of Old Bailey
"When I grow Rich" say the Bells of Shoreditch
"Pray when will that be?" say the Bells of Stepney
"I do not know" say the Great Bell of Bow

Another one that Paterfamilias mentioned and I couldn't believe I'd missed out was London Bridge is Falling Down (click for an illustrated version):

London Bridge is falling down,
Falling down, Falling down.
London Bridge is falling down,
My fair lady.

Take a key and lock her up,
Lock her up, Lock her up.

Take a key and lock her up,
My fair lady.

How will we build it up,
Build it up, Build it up?

How will we build it up,
My fair lady?

Build it up with silver and gold,
Silver and gold, Silver and gold.

Build it up with silver and gold,
My fair lady.

Gold and silver I have none,
I have none, I have none.

Gold and silver I have none,
My fair lady.

Build it up with needles and pins,
Needles and pins, Needles and pins.

Build it up with needles and pins,
My fair lady.

Pins and needles bend and break,
Bend and break, Bend and break.

Pins and needles bend and break,
My fair lady.

Build it up with wood and clay,
Wood and clay, Wood and clay.

Build it up with wood and clay,
My fair lady.

Wood and clay will wash away,
Wash away, Wash away.

Wood and clay will wash away,
My fair lady.

Build it up with stone so strong,
Stone so strong, Stone so strong.

Build it up with stone so strong,
My fair lady.

Stone so strong will last so long,
Last so long, Last so long.

Stone so strong will last so long,
My fair lady.

Although many say that London Brige "falling down" harks back to the Great Fire of 1666, this is discounted by history because the brige did not actually burn down. "My fair lady" is often attributed to Elizabeth I, but again, her reign was long over by the great fire. According to warphead.com, this rhyme may actually date back to Viking times, when the bridge was indeed torn down. And the "fair lady" may actually be a virgin ritually buried in the bridge's foundations!

Incidentally, by the 1960s, London Bridge really was falling down. So when the American town of Lake Havasu City, Arizona made an offer of $2.4 million to buy the bridge in order to ship it over and rebuild it stone by stone in Arizona the London authorities jumped at the chance. Only when the brige had actually been delivered (so the story goes) did the Arizonans jump up in arms ask "where are the opening up bits, where are the towers?" The bridge they had bought was a common (but nice-looking) road bridge, not the ornate landmark they'd been expecting.

The Americans had confused London Bridge (by 1962 a pretty bog-standard large stone bridge) with the spectacular Tower Bridge - which would never have been put up for sale anyhow!

Wikipedia's London Bridge article shows lots of red London buses and blue Connex commuter trains. Their top picture, incidentally, includes a view of the famous Gherkin tower block.

By the way, the reason (so I hear) that London's towers are so poxily, embarrassingly gnomelike by international standards is an eejut height restriction put in to assist planes flying into the tiny City of London Airport (City of London refers to the financial district not the metropolis and the airport there is tiny. London's main airport, Heathrow, is the world's busiest international transport hub.