"Sing a Song of Sixpence" is an English nursery rhyme, perhaps originating in the 18th century. It is listed in the Roud Folk Song Index as number 13191. The sixpence in the rhyme is a British coin that was first minted in 1551 and became obsolete in 1980 after the country's transition to the decimal currency system in 1971.
Origins
thumb|upright|The Queen Was in the Parlour, Eating Bread and Honey, by [[Valentine Cameron Prinsep.]]
The rhyme's origins are uncertain. References have been inferred in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night (c. 1602), (), where Sir Toby Belch tells a clown: "Come on; there is sixpence for you: let's have a song" and in Beaumont and Fletcher's 1614 play Bonduca, which contains the line "Whoa, here's a stir now! Sing a song o' sixpence!"
In the past it has often been attributed to George Steevens (1736–1800), who used it in a pun at the expense of Poet Laureate Henry James Pye (1745–1813) in 1790, but the first verse had already appeared in print in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, published in London around 1744, in the form:
<poem style="margin-left: 2em;">Sing a Song of Sixpence,
A bag full of Rye,
Four and twenty Naughty Boys,
Baked in a Pye.</poem>
The fifth and final verse—usually sung after the fourth verse—is sometimes slightly varied (after the blackbird "pecked off" the maid's nose). One of the following additional verses is often added to moderate the ending:
or:
<poem style="margin-left: 2em;">There was such a commotion,
That little Jenny wren
Flew down into the garden,
And put it back again.
Melody
Version 1
This may be the most well-known version in Britain and the Commonwealth.
<score sound="1">{ \set Staff.midiInstrument = #"accordion" \key c \major \time 4/4
c8 b'8 a'8 g'8 c4 e'8 e'8 |
g'8 a'8 g'8 e'8 g'2 |
c8 b'8 a'8 g'8 c4 e'4 |
d'4 a'8 a'8 a'2 |
g'8 c8 c8 c8 c4 c8 c8 |
b'8 d8 d8 d8 d2|
e8 d8 c8 b'8 c8 b'8 a'8 g'8 |
a'8 c8 b'8 d8 c2 \bar "|." }
\addlyrics { Sing a song of six -- pence, a poc -- ket full of rye.
Four and twen -- ty black -- birds baked in a pie.
When the pie was o -- pened, the birds be -- gan to sing.
Was -- n't that a dain -- ty dish to set be -- fore the king?}</score>
Version 2
This version may be well known in the United States.
<score sound="1">{ \set Staff.midiInstrument = #"accordion" \key c \major \time 4/4
g'8 a'8 g'8 e'8 c'4 c8 c8 |
b'8 b'8 d'8 e'8 f'2 |
f'8 g'8 f'8 d'8 b4 a'4 |
g'4 c'8 d'8 e'2 |
g'8 a'8 g'8 e'8 c'4 c8 c8 |
b'8 b'8 d'8 e'8 f'2|
f'8 g'8 a'8 g'8 f'8 e'8 d'8 e'8 |
f'8 g'8 a'8 b'8 c2 \bar "|." }
\addlyrics { Sing a song of six -- pence, a poc -- ket full of rye.
Four and twen -- ty black -- birds baked in a pie.
When the pie was o -- pened, the birds be -- gan to sing.
Was -- n't that a dain -- ty dish to set be -- fore the king?}</score>
Meaning and interpretations
Many interpretations have been placed on this rhyme. It is known that a 16th-century amusement was to place live birds in a pie, as a form of entremet. An Italian cookbook from 1549 (translated into English in 1598) contained such a recipe: "to make pies so that birds may be alive in them and fly out when it is cut up" and this was referred to in a cook book of 1725 by John Nott. The wedding of Marie de' Medici and Henry IV of France in 1600 contains some interesting parallels. "The first surprise, though, came shortly before the starter—when the guests sat down, unfolded their napkins and saw songbirds fly out. The highlight of the meal was sherbets of milk and honey, which were created by Buontalenti."
In their 1951 The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, Iona and Peter Opie write that the rhyme has been tied to a variety of historical events or folklorish symbols such as the queen symbolizing the moon, the king the sun, and the blackbirds the number of hours in a day; or, as the authors indicate, the blackbirds have been seen as an allusion to monks during the period of the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII, with Catherine of Aragon representing the queen, and Anne Boleyn the maid. The rye and the birds have been seen to represent a tribute sent to Henry VII, and on another level, the term "pocketful of rye" may in fact refer to an older term of measurement. The number 24 has been tied to the Reformation and the printing of the English Bible with 24 letters. From a folklorish tradition, the blackbird taking the maid's nose has been seen as a demon stealing her soul.
No corroborative evidence has been found to support these theories and, given that the earliest version has only one stanza and mentions "naughty boys" and not blackbirds, some of these meanings would not have been original unless it is assumed that more recently printed versions accurately preserve an older tradition. Blackbeard had nothing to do with the song. This story was created in 1999 by the website Snopes (which normally proves or debunks urban legends) as part of a series of fabricated urban legends known as "The Repository of Lost Legends" (whose initials read "TROLL") as red herrings to test people's common sense with an outlandish story. The "blackbirds" were pirates who work for Blackbeard and their being "Baked in a pie" is the pirates setting up a ruse to raid a nearby ship and capture it. After the break, the show mistakenly claimed it was "true" and mentioned its supposed connection to Blackbeard, implying that Snopes was used by the show's producers as a source.