Pop Goes The Weasel

"Pop! Goes the Weasel"
Roud #5249
Pop! Goes the Weasel tune
Song
Written	England
Published	1853
Form	Nursery rhyme
Writer(s)	Traditional
Language	English

“Pop! Goes the Weasel” is an English nursery rhyme and singing game. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 5249. The jack-in-the-box children’s toy often plays the melody.

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

Often a second verse is added:

And:

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". 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:

Additional verses related to both traditions are:

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 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:

Contemporary verses in the United States include these:

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.