Pop goes the weasel Was: Eenie Meenie

[Michael Quinion]

Just back from holiday, so have only just seen this.

Lynne Murphy wrote:

> We discussed this about 5 years ago, so it might be on archive
> somewhere. There are many different verses to this song.  The
> mulberry bush verse is the main one sung in the US, but it's
> virtually unknown elsewhere.  The weasel is really a cobbler's
> tool--it seems to have originally been a cobbler's drinking
> song and has been reanalysed much.

The story of Pop Goes the Weasel - both tune and words - is
rather complicated. The words were first constructed as a music
hall song in Britain, based on a punning reinterpretation of the
catchline of a country dance with that title published in 1850
in America (though the tune is actually much older). Several
versions of the words exist.

The weasel is variously said to have been some sort of tool (a
tailor's iron is often also suggested) but is most probably
rhyming slang: "weasel and stoat" = "coat". So "pop goes the
weasel" in the music-hall song would have meant "the coat is
pawned" (I don't think anybody knows the meaning of the original
American dance catchline, if indeed it was ever anything other
than a nonsense phrase). If you're interested, take a look at

  <http://www.quinion.com/words/qa/qa-pop1.htm>.


--
Michael Quinion
World Wide Words
<words at quinion.com>
<http://www.quinion.com/words/>