(no subject)

[rivka]

[Poll #930518]

Comments

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

I can't really answer the first question, because growing up on Long Island, NY, we sang both versions as kids.

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

It's a folk song. Folk songs change. If you like "mulberry bush", go for it!

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

What? Me? A filker? Change the words?

As IF!

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Is SE Texas by the Louisiana border Southeast or Southwest? Liminality, thy name is TexAnne. And I can't be sure that I didn't learn it from the Little House books--it was Laura's favorite fiddle tune, and they were my favorite books.

[ladyvonkulp.livejournal.com]

I love your polls, no two ways about it.

This is actually an argument Paul (4YO) and I were having a few months ago. He's got a toy that does 'mulberry bush' and I remember 'cobbler's bench' and pulled out the supporting songbook.

Heck, there are a lot of kids nowadays who only know 'Pop goes the diesel' from Thomas the Tank Engine and have never heard of the original. Scary.

[roozle.livejournal.com]

If it's "mulberry bush" then the next verse --

A penny for a spool of thread
a penny for a needle
that's the way the money goes
POP like the weasel

doesn't make as much sense.

I was born in NJ and then we moved to Ohio and Michigan for about 3 years and then back to NJ. So would those states be mid-west?

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Heck, there are a lot of kids nowadays who only know 'Pop goes the diesel' from Thomas the Tank Engine and have never heard of the original. Scary.

*wince*

This is currently a subject of hot debate at our house because I learned "cobbler's bench" and Michael (my husband) learned "mulberry bush." Alex's nursery rhyme CD says "cobbler's bench," but according to Michael, the library story hour leader says "mulberry bush."

This morning, Alex was going around and around the glider in her bedroom, chanting:

Round about and round about I go [1]
Round the mulberry bush, mulberry bush, mulberry bush
The monkey chased the weasel
Round the table in the nursery [1]

...so I guess we'll call her eclectic.


[1] from A.A. Milne, "Busy."

[rivka.livejournal.com]

...and interestingly enough, Michael (who learned "mulberry bush") doesn't know the "penny for a spool of thread..." verse, while I (who learned "cobbler's bench") do.

Damn, I should have included that as an additional variable.

[ladyvonkulp.livejournal.com]

Where are you and Michael originally from? Nico and I are both from Ohio, I'm not sure which version he grew up with.

[ladyvonkulp.livejournal.com]

The kicker? The toy Paul has does BOTH "mulberry bush" and the "penny for a spool &c." verse. That makes NO sense.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Not quite neither of the above, because I've read the mulberry bush version, but the classic UK version is:

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.

One explanation goes as follows:

'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"

but I've also heard that 'weasel' was the name for a particular bit of tailoring equipment. Though pop in the sense of pawn still applied in that rescension.
No monkeys, to the best of my recollection, in the versions heard in my childhood.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Me: upstate New York. Michael: Tennessee.

[tiger-spot.livejournal.com]

I called it Southeast.

[ladyvonkulp.livejournal.com]

I suppose mulberry bushes are more common down south, I bet that has something to do with the regional differences.

[tiger-spot.livejournal.com]

I'd heard that "weasel" was slang for "means of earning a living". So the monkey was chasing the cobbler's thread and so forth around the bench, and got it all ruined, and then it had to be replaced.

[ladyvonkulp.livejournal.com]

Yep, check out the Wikipedia entry for it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_Goes_the_Weasel

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Me too, precisely that version, learned in South Wales in the late sixties. I never heard of any cobblers' benches, and mulberry bushes are for going around in that other song.

You didn't have an option for "both wrong"!

[geekchick]

I just finished reading Heavy Words Lightly Thrown recently (interesting book, although kinda light on the sourcing), and it uses this verse:

All around the cobbler's bench
The monkey chased the people.
The donkey thought 'twas all in fun,
Pop! goes the weasel

That variant I'd never heard, I assumed it was just a difference between US and UK versions of the rhyme. I learned the mulberry bush version when I was little, I don't think I heard the cobbler's bench variant until much later.

[roozle.livejournal.com]

It occurred to me after I wrote my reply that perhaps the presence of cobblers and tailors in my family tree explains why I know one version and not the other.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

but I've also heard that 'weasel' was the name for a particular bit of tailoring equipment. Though pop in the sense of pawn still applied in that rescension.

Supposedly a "weasel" is a device which measures out a length of thread (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinners_weasel), and which makes a mechanical popping noise. I'm a bit dubious just because of the neatness of the match - after all, there are also dozens of websites etc. which will assure you that "Ring around the rosy" is about the Black Plague.

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

Ah, but I knew that verse. (But who said kids' songs have to make sense?)

[lysana.livejournal.com]

That's how I learned it.

[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.

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

It occurs to me that if you really wanted to mess with Alex's future teachers' minds, you could teach her to hellspark "All around the mulberry bench" and "All around the cobbler's bush" (but that latter could be problematic, so never mind).

[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.