Pop Goes the Weasel

At the counter at Times the Bookstore today I flipped through The Wives of Bath, a chick-lit novel by Weny Holden that had the distinction of being named after my favourite of the Canterbury Tales ("Experience, though noon auctoritee..."), which was why I flipped through it in the first place. This was not, I'm sad to say, Susan Swan's more distinguished novel of the same title, which eventually was made into a film I really liked, Lost and Delirious.

The weird thing is, Lost and Delirious was the very film that was bugging me, as its name eluded me for the whole of this morning (I was just going "what's that film about those girls in boarding school called?"), and looking up that Susan Swan link reminded me of the film. Yay, one less nagging trivia question in my mind. Hey, Mischa Barton was in that movie!

But I digress. The point is, the Wives of Bath page I flipped to had the words to "Pop Goes the Weasel", which I've never known, and are:
Up and down the City Road
In and out the Eagle
That's the way the money goes
Pop goes the weasel!
Hadn't realised it was so London-centric. The Eagle's a good gastropub, I must say, albeit overpriced. This site has the full explanation of the lyrics (has to do with pawning your stuff to pay your bar tabs), plus other verses.

Funny how nursery rhymes can have very adult origins - it's like how "Sing a Song of Sixpence" is a pirates' recruiting song. Unfortunately, "Ring-a-ring-a-roses" is not a reference to the Plague, contrary to what Bill Bryson wrote in Mother Tongue.

Tangential link: Susan Swan on the adaptation of The Wives of Bath into film.

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