The MENA thread about nothing

[amal 4]

and speaking of pockets...how did lucy locket actually LOSE her pocket? was it not sewn to her outfit? I haven't dropped a pocket any time recently...i never did get that

[S and S 12]

and speaking of pockets...how did lucy locket actually LOSE her pocket? was it not sewn to her outfit? I haven't dropped a pocket any time recently...i never did get that

[~PalmTreeGurl~ 154]

the MENA thread about nothing... hmm I will add to this thought... I have thin patience for rude, demeaning, ignornant customers at walmart. The End! that felt good to get it out !

[maggieNomar 0]

where IS the peck of pickled peppers that peter piper picked???

I refuse to answer that, lol, I'll leave it to someone else

Maybe peter peter put it in his pumkin shell?

the MENA thread about nothing... hmm I will add to this thought... I have thin patience for rude, demeaning, ignornant customers at walmart. The End! that felt good to get it out !

Glad we could help.

Amal: I'd like to hear about those braids when we run out of nothingness to say.

Noura: I am a true Pooh Follower

[maggieNomar 0]

Dang I made the top 20 posters list for today... oooops that is SOMETHING..not for this thread But what the heck. I already started. I haven't been on the top 20 list since on airplane watch for my husband to arrive the first time.

[Nasturtium 500]

I've never heard Lucy Locket.. let me look it up.... a pocket used to be a seperate piece of material like a purse that you either sometimes sewed on your clothes, but normally it was like a purse (thus pocket book)...

OK. According to wiki:

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

Lucy Locket was a barmaid at the #######, in Fleet Street, London, sometime in the 1700s. Lucy discarded one of her lovers (her 'pocket') when she had run through all his money. Kitty Fisher, a noted courtesan, took up with him, even though he had no money. It also taunts Lucy Locket because a "pocket" was what prostitutes kept their money in and would tie to their thigh with a ribbon.

Lucy Locket lost her pocket,

Kitty Fisher found it;

Not a penny was there in it,

Only ribbon 'round it.

Edited July 29, 2008 by julianna

[Dr. A ♥ O 203]

A pocket where money is keep by modern day prostitutes is currently referred to as a snatch. I think you get the idea. It was my unfortunate discovery when I wanted to know why Brad Pitt would star as an incomprehensible gypsy in a movie called SNATCH.

[Ban Hammer 12,901]

A pocket where money is keep by modern day prostitutes is currently referred to as a snatch.

brings new meaning to packing it........

[Staashi 371]

A pocket where money is keep by modern day prostitutes is currently referred to as a snatch.

brings new meaning to packing it........

[S and S 12]

A pocket where money is keep by modern day prostitutes is currently referred to as a snatch.

brings new meaning to packing it........

[Nagishkaw 510]

Or the word deposit.

[brnidokiegurl 0]

where IS the peck of pickled peppers that peter piper picked???

in his pretty purple purse

[S and S 12]

Or the word deposit.

What happens when you cash in? lol

[amal 4]

I've never heard Lucy Locket.. let me look it up.... a pocket used to be a seperate piece of material like a purse that you either sometimes sewed on your clothes, but normally it was like a purse (thus pocket book)...

OK. According to wiki:

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

Lucy Locket was a barmaid at the #######, in Fleet Street, London, sometime in the 1700s. Lucy discarded one of her lovers (her 'pocket') when she had run through all his money. Kitty Fisher, a noted courtesan, took up with him, even though he had no money. It also taunts Lucy Locket because a "pocket" was what prostitutes kept their money in and would tie to their thigh with a ribbon.

Lucy Locket lost her pocket,

Kitty Fisher found it;

Not a penny was there in it,

Only ribbon 'round it.

oh my goodness gracious!! what are we teaching our children!!!.... no wonder we're all screwed up!j/k

I guess we could all go on a nursery rhyme scavenger hunt to find the true meaning behind them? anyone up for the hunt?

I know that ring around the rosies has something to do with death and dying

let's make that our first one and don't move on to the next until the first has been answered.

1. ring around the rosies

2. london bridge is falling down

3. mary mary quite contrary

4. jack and jill

5. jack spratt

6. the old woman that lived in a shoe

7. hey diddle diddle

8. 3 blind mice

9. jack be nimble

10. peter peter pumpkin eater

11. hicory dicory dock

12. blue bells cockel shells

ok..12 is a good number. Should give us plenty to do if we get bored lol!

now its time to go off to work. I'll check in periodically if time allows it ensha'allah

[brnidokiegurl 0]

Meaning

Verse from a nursery rhyme.

Origin

There are many versions of this rhyme, some of which use entirely different words to the roses/rosy variants. The most commonly seen are 'ring a ring of (or o') roses (or rosy)' and 'ring around a rosy'. The many versions aren't surprising as, being lines from a playground rhyme, they would have been spoken/sung/chanted rather than read from a book.

It is sometimes suggested that the rhyme relates to the Black Death - the bubonic plague that spread through Europe in the 1340s, or to the Great Plague of London, 1665/6. The plausible-sounding theory has it that the 'ring' is the ring of sores around the mouths of plague victims, who subsequently sneeze and fall down dead.

The first appearance of the rhyme in print is in Kate Greenaway's Mother Goose, which wasn't published until 1881, suggesting that the rhyme originated far too late for the Great Plague to have been the origin:

Ring-a-ring-a-roses,

A pocket full of posies;

Hush! hush! hush! hush!

We're all tumbled down.

Some of the refutations of the plague origin theory are rather too emphatic in their dismissing of this idea. Firstly, the 1881 date that is part of the refutations is a little misleading. That is the first known printing of the complete rhyme, but the game and the 'ring a ring of rosies' line were known well before that. The game and the rhyme were known in the USA, and quite probably elsewhere, by at least 1855, when it was included in The Old Homestead, a novel by Ann S. Stephens. This depicts children playing 'Ring, ring a rosy' in New York.

William Wells Newell, the author of Games and Songs of American Children, 1884, wrote that Ring a Ring a Rosie, with the familiar tune, was in use by children in Bedford, Massachusetts, circa 1790. The version he recorded was:

Ring a ring a rosie

A bottle full of posie,

All the girls in our town,

Ring for little Josie

Newell was a respected folklorist, although he didn't supply documentary evidence for his assertion.

The argument that the lyric couldn't have lasted in common playground parlance but without being recorded in print from the days of the 1340s until 1881 has some weight. From the Great Plague of 1665 until 1790 isn't such a stretch. An unrecorded period of 125 years doesn't seem entirely impossible - many phrases have lain dormant for longer than that. Children's rhymes would have been of little interest to authors in the 17th century and printing was then still an expensive process. There's no evidence to suggest that these lines originated as anything other than a children's rhyme and would inevitably have been known to children for some time before appearing in print. How long a time is open to conjecture, but 125 years - well, why not?

However, showing that something is possible doesn't make it true. It is a common urge to try to ascribe meaning to obscure lyrics and poems - for example, 'Pop goes the weasel'. The 'atishoo, atishoo, all fall down' lyric isn't present in many of the the numerous versions and also doesn't tally with the actual symptoms of people suffering from plague. The adherents to the Great Plague derivation may be trying too hard, but it may just be true.

An alternative and more probable explanation, which is a commonplace one in regard to nursery rhymes, is that the words are playful nonsense.

The etymology of this lyric is a good example of how untruths can so easily spread. In attempting to deny what they had pre-judged as a false 'bubonic plague' explanation several websites have begged the question by swallowing the 'first time the phrase appears in print is 1881' as fact. As a French wine producer who tasted a poor imported wine which was labelled 'Appellation d’origine contrôlée' once said, "the paper never refuses the ink" - that goes double for digital paper.

Edited July 29, 2008 by brnidokiegurl