Sing a Song Of High Rents
Nursery rhymes, we're told, are really coded stories. For instance, the "contrary" Mary we grew up with is supposedly Mary Tudor, daughter of Henry VIII, who when she became queen tried to heal the rift with the Catholic Church. The silver bells referred to were cathedral bells, the cockle shells were a symbol of a pilgrimage to a Catholic Shrine, and the maids were nuns. With a bit of tinkering Pop Goes the Weasel, a song about hard times, could be a contemporary lament:Half a pound of tuppenny rice
Half a tank of diesel
That’s the way the money goes,
Pop! goes the weasel.
I'm guessing The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe with too many dogs is really about athlete's foot.
posted by John M Crowther @ 7:49 AM
6 Comments:
Contrary to popular imagination, there actually was an old woman who lived in a shoe. She was from Capri and the shoe was a very large one. (Gucci size 5834 and a ½). The old woman lived in the right one and rented out the left to a rich American with a yacht, as proven by Sinatra’s variation on an old Ray Nobel song:
‘Twas on the Isle of Capri that I found her
’Neath the shade of an old walnut tree.
Oh, I can still see the flow'rs bloomin' round her
Where we met on the Isle of Capri.
She whispered softly ‘It's best not to linger’
And then as I kissed her hand I could see
She wore a lovely meatball on her finger.
'Twas goodbye at the Villa Capri.”
Obviously, the old shoe lady in question was not a sadist; her children subsisted on spaghetti and meat balls.
We're always grateful to il prof for his elucidations. I do believe, however, the first lines of the song in question, in the orginal version, went:
‘Twas on the Isle of Capri that I found her
’Neath the shade of a pump, triple C.'
LOL okay you two... falling off my chair laughing here!
Such joyful repartee...
was had at the Villa Capri!
Can not top these. Great cartoon, John C.
John are you getting a book together? I hope so.
Ellie
I've heard differently John...bloody Mary Tudor's "garden" was a bulging graveyard filled with idolotrous protestant believers. The "pretty maids all in a row refer to the beheading blocks built for her "garden plants", (early guillotine-like device). The silver bells were a finger pinching torture device and the cockle shells...well...they were used on the genitals to flush out confessions before execution. Lovely lady that Mary...how charming that my parents decided to bestow me with her name, (and we're not even Catholic)
As for the old woman in the shoe...I always thought she was kind of cool...I don't think she wore Gucci but dwelled instead in a comfortable L.L.Bean hiking boot...
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