Oranges and Lemons - Origins and Meaning

Origins and Meaning

Various theories have been advanced to account for the rhyme, including: that it deals with child sacrifice; that it describes public executions; that it describes Henry VIII's marital difficulties. Problematically for these theories the last two lines, with their different metre, do not appear in the earlier recorded versions of the rhyme, including the first printed in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book (c. 1744), where the lyrics are:

Two Sticks and Apple,
Ring y Bells at Whitechapple,
Old Father Bald Pate,
Ring y Bells Aldgate,
Maids in White Aprons,
Ring y Bells a S Catherines,
Oranges and Lemons,
Ring y bells at S Clements,
When will you pay me,
Ring y Bells at y Old Bailey,
When I am Rich,
Ring y Bells at Fleetditch,
When will that be,
Ring y Bells at Stepney,
When I am Old,
Ring y Bells at Pauls.

There is considerable variation in the churches and lines attached to them in versions printed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, which makes any overall meaning difficult to establish. The final two lines of the modern version were first collected by James Orchard Halliwell in the 1840s.

Oranges and Lemons was the name of a square-four-eight-dance, published in Playford's, Dancing Master in 1665, but it is not clear if this relates to this rhyme. Similar rhymes naming churches and giving rhymes to their names can be found in other parts of England, including Shropshire and Derby, where they were sung on festival days, on which bells would also have been rung.

The identity of the churches is not always clear, but the following have been suggested, along with some factors that may have influenced the accompanying statements:

• St. Martin's may be St Martin Orgar or St. Martin's Lane in the city, where moneylenders used to live.
• St Sepulchre-without-Newgate (opposite the Old Bailey) is near the Fleet Prison where debtors were held.
• St Leonard's, Shoreditch is just outside the old city walls
• St Dunstan's, Stepney is also just outside the city walls
• Bow is St Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside
• St. Helen's, in the longer version of the song, is St Helen's Bishopsgate, in the city.
• St. Clements's may be St Clement Danes or St Clement Eastcheap both of which are near the wharves where merchantmen landed citrus fruits.