Pop Goes the Weasel


"Pop! Goes the Weasel" is an English nursery rhyme and singing game. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 5249. It is often used in Jack-in-the-box toys.

Lyrics

There are many different versions of the lyrics to the song. In England, most share the basic verse:

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Often a second and third verse is added:

Origins

The rhyme may have originated in the 18th century, and mentions The Eagle tavern on London's City Road, which stopped being a pub in 1825, until rebuilt in 1901 and is still extant.
A boat named "Pop Goes The Weasel" competed in the Durham Regatta in June 1852, but it was in December of that year that "Pop Goes The Weasel" first came to prominence as a social dance in England. A ball held in Ipswich on 13 December 1852 ended with "a country dance, entitled 'Pop Goes the Weasel', one of the most mirth inspiring dances which can well be imagined." On 24 December 1852, dance lessons for "Pop Goes The Weasel", described as a "highly fashionable Dance, recently introduced at her Majesty's and the Nobility's private soirees", were advertised in Birmingham. By the 28th of that month, a publication including "the new dance recently introduced with such distinguished success at the Court balls" and containing "the original music and a full explanation of the figures by Mons. E. Coulon" was being advertised in The Times.
The tune appears to have begun as dance music, to which words were later added.. A music sheet acquired by the British Library in 1853 describes a dance, "Pop! Goes the Weasel", as "An Old English Dance, as performed at Her Majesty's & The Nobilities Balls, with the Original Music". It had a tune very similar to that used today but only the words "Pop! Goes the Weasel". A similar piece of sheet music published in 1853 is available online at the Library of Congress; it also contains no words other than "Pop Goes the Weasel", but gives a detailed description of the dance.
The dance became extremely popular, and featured on stage as well as in dance-halls. By September of the same year the title was being used as a scornful riposte and soon words were added to an already well-known tune. The song is mentioned in November 1855 in a Church of England pamphlet where it is described as a universally popular song played in the streets on barrel organs, but with "senseless lyrics": the use of alternative, more wholesome words is suggested. The following verse had been written by 1856 when it was quoted in a performance at the Theatre Royal.
A piece of sheet music, copyrighted in Baltimore in 1846, advertises "Pop Goes the Weasel, sung by Mr. Chapman", written by "Raymond", as among the "Ballads" available for sale from the same publisher; however a copy of that sheet music available online at Johns Hopkins University indicates that it dates from significantly later.

American versions

The song seems to have crossed the Atlantic in the 1850s where U.S. newspapers soon afterwards call it "the latest English dance", and the phrase "Pop! goes the weasel" soon took hold. The remaining words were still unstable in Britain, and as a result some of the U.S. lyrics are significantly different and may have an entirely different source, but use the same tune. The following lyric was printed in Boston in 1858:
In her autobiographical novel Little House in the Big Woods, published in 1932, American author Laura Ingalls Wilder recalls her father in 1873 singing the lyrics:
In 1901 in New York the opening lines were:
The most common recent version was not recorded until 1914. In addition to the three verses above, American versions often include some of the following:
By the mid-20th Century, the standard United States lyrics had replaced the "cobbler's bench" with a "mulberry bush."
This replacement appears to be a transfer from a then-common idiom, and a carryover from another children's nursery rhyme, "Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush". "Here we go round the mulberry bush" has a particularly similar melody, especially when "mulberry" is given the American three syllables, hence the ease of carryover. During the first decades of the 20th Century, the common idiom "to beat all around the mulberry bush" meant to avoid speaking of a difficult topic by taking far longer to refer to it obliquely, in the hopes of not giving offense.. In 1938, a song called "Stop Beatin' Round the Mulberry Bush", with lyrics by Bickley Reichner and music by Clay Boland and built around the basic melody of the nursery rhyme, was popular with recordings by bands such as Fats Waller, Count Basie, Jack Hylton, Nat Gonella, and Joe Loss. That version became popular again in 1953, when it was recorded by Bill Haley & His Comets. The idiom has since been shortened to "to beat around the bush."
Contemporary verses in the United States include these, the first three being sung one after the other with the third getting the 'closing' version of the tune.
Another common version replaces "Cobbler's Bench" with "Mulberry Bush", as shown below.
There are numerous American versions as printed in Vance Randolph, Ozark Folksongs, Volume III,
pp. 368–369. Randolph's #556, the A text. Collected 1926 from Mrs. Marie Wilbur of Pineville, Missouri.

Meaning and interpretations

Perhaps because of the obscure nature of the various lyrics there have been many suggestions for what they mean, particularly the phrase "Pop! goes the weasel", including: that it is a tailor's flat iron, a dead weasel, a hatter's tool, a spinner's weasel used for measuring in spinning, a piece of silver plate, or that weasel and stoat is Cockney rhyming slang for throat, as in "get that down yer weasel", meaning to eat or drink something.
An alternative meaning which fits better with the theme of "that's the way the money goes" involves pawning one's coat in desperation to buy food and drink, as "weasel " is more usually and traditionally Cockney rhyming slang for coat than throat and "pop" is a slang word for pawn. Therefore, "Pop goes the weasel" meant pawning a coat. Decent coats and other clothes were handmade, expensive and pawnable. A "monkey on the house" is slang for a mortgage or other secured loan. If knocked off the table or ignored it would go unpaid and accrue interest, requiring the coat to be pawned again. The stick itself may also be rhyming slang - "Sticks and Stones: Loans".
The "Eagle" on City Road in the song's third verse probably refers to The Eagle Tavern, at the corner of Shepherdess Walk. The Eagle Tavern was an old pub in City Road, London, which was rebuilt as a music hall in 1825, and rebuilt again in 1901 as a public house, still extant. This public house bears a plaque with this interpretation of the nursery rhyme and the pub's history.
A spinner's weasel consists of a wheel which is revolved by the spinner in order to measure off thread or yarn after it has been produced on the spinning wheel. The weasel is usually built so that the circumference is six feet, so that 40 revolutions produces 80 yards of yarn, which is a skein. It has wooden gears inside and a cam, designed to cause a popping sound after the 40th revolution, telling the spinner that she has completed the skein.
Other than correspondences, none of these theories has any additional evidence to support it, and some can be discounted because of the known history of the song. Iona and Peter Opie observed that, even at the height of the dance craze in the 1850s, no-one seemed to know what the phrase meant.

As a singing game

In Britain the rhyme has been played as a children's game since at least the late 19th century. The first verse quoted above is sung, while several rings are formed and they dance around. One player more than the number of rings are designated as "weasels", all but one standing in the rings. When the "Pop! goes the weasel" line is reached they have to rush to a new ring before anyone else can. The one that fails is eliminated and the number of circles is reduced by one until there is only one weasel left.
This is similar to the game of musical chairs: music is played as players circle a row of chairs, one fewer chairs than players, while music plays. When the music stops, the players vie for the available chairs, and the player left standing is "out".

Pop recording

A pop version of the song was recorded in 1938 by The Merry Macs on Decca Records and again in 1961 by British singer Anthony Newley, also on the Decca label, and reached number 12 in the UK singles chart.
Bing Crosby included the song in a medley on his album 101 Gang Songs.
The tune is prominently used in numerous Three Stooges episodes.
The theme song for the Cartoon Network show I Am Weasel is a surf-rock version with different lyrics to match the show's premise.
Lords of Acid parodied the song, replacing "tuppenny rice" with "heroin", in the song "Out Comes the Evil".
A parodied version of the rhyme is heard prominently in The Railway Series, later as Thomas and Friends in the stories "Pop Goes the Diesel", "Dirty Work" and "Toad Stands By".
It was used in 1963 as the theme music for the 15 episodes of the BBC radio show called Pop Go The Beatles that was aired on Tuesdays at 5 pm on the BBC Light Programme station. The first episode was broadcast on 4 June and the last on 24 September. The jingle was recorded by the British group on Friday 24 May but ultimately not included in either BBC albums.
The tune is also used in the video game Five Nights at Freddy's 2 where once a music box stops playing, a version similar to the one used in jack-in-the-boxes plays before the Puppet jumpscares the player.