(no subject)

[rivka]

[Poll #930518]

Comments

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's the version I know. I didn't even recognise the rhymes Rivka was asking about as being a version of the same thing. The Eagle is a pub in Hoxton (north-east London), on the corner of City Road and Shepherdess Walk, and still exists.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I didn't even recognise the rhymes Rivka was asking about as being a version of the same thing.

The full version that I learned:

All around the cobbler's bench
The monkey chased the weasel
The monkey thought it was all in fun
Pop! Goes the weasel.

A penny for a spool of thread
A penny for a needle
That's the way the money goes
Pop! Goes the weasel.

It seems that most Americans learned either this version, or the same thing except with "mulberry bush" in the first line. I never heard the "tuppenny rice" version, and I don't even know what treacle is.

[carandol.livejournal.com]

"Treacle" is what we call "molasses" in the UK!

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I am oddly disappointed that it isn't anything more exotic. ;-) This is a lot like finding out that a "sticking plaster" is just an ordinary old band-aid.

[carandol.livejournal.com]

I think I was equally disappointed when I found that molasses wasn't something exotic and tropical from the Caribbean. Well, it *was*, sort of, but it was also that perfectly ordinary stuff of which pudding and toffee was made.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

Me, too! Damn. I thought it was like Lyle's Golden Syrup, only available in import stores.

[em-h.livejournal.com]

It tastes better if you call it treacle, though.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was going to say the only nursery rhyme I know with a weasel in is Pop Goes the Weasel.

I've never heard that second verse, though.