London Bridge is Falling Down!
Today I thought it would be fun to talk about children's nursery rhymes. Since we've had language, and maybe even before, children have probably been making up rhymes to measure out beats as they play a game of repetition. Jump rope, circle dances, skipping, hand clapping. How many silver buttons does Miss Merry Mac have down her back? There's something almost sacredly human about the desire to put music to our play, to sift through words to find the ones that go well together and make up stories with them.
And the thing about children is that they often repeat, in part and only partial understanding, what they hear going on in the adult world around them.
London Bridge is falling down
falling down
falling down
Maybe you played this one as a child yourself. Two children hold hands, arms raised and everyone else must pass between them and under their arms while the song is chanted. At the last moment:
Take the keys and lock her up
lock her up
lock her up
take the keys and lock her up
my fair lady.
the two children forming the 'bridge' with their raised hands drop their arms and catch the child trying to go through. Much laughing and half struggling ensues and then the captured child either sits the game out or takes over for one of the 'bridges' and the song begins again.
London Bridge is falling down.
Perhaps we're all too well trained by horror movies but there can be a whisper of something more haunting in the simple game if you want there to be. A song about a falling bridge and a captured lady, trapped inside the supports of the human girders. Was there something darker once? Something children knew about the adult world that they filtered down into their songs and playtime, absorbing it as children will do into half truths and make-believe, until all that was left of it was a children's rhyme about captive ladies and falling bridges?
Tell me if you've heard this one.
Once upon a time, far back in our grey history but not as far back as we'd like it to be, there was a belief that human buildings of importance needed more than just human ingenuity to keep them standing against the wear and tear of use and time. Against the things that fluttered through our shadows and ran in our dark streets at the edges of our eyesight. Folklore said that the first person buried in a new churchyard didn't get into heaven. Instead, their souls had to guard the now sacred grounds until the final Trumpet, when the world ended and they would be released from their eternal vigilance. Oftentimes, a dog would be buried in the churchyard first, a canine stand-in guardian, protecting the human souls and seeing them on their way, patient in its duty until the Last Day.
According to some legends, graveyards weren't the only human creations that needed a human soul to stand guard over them.
Immurement is the practice of walling someone up inside a building while they are still alive (Cask of Amontillado style). It was used as a form of punishment for a large swath of cultures and many a folktale sprung up about it even in places where there wasn't any physical proof. Thieves, treacherous daughter, spies, star-crossed lovers and political opponents all met their ends walled up in foundations and tunnels under palaces in the stories.
So it shouldn't surprise you if I tell you that the children's skipping rhyme 'London Bridge' is rooted in the same dark practice. Take the keys and lock up the fair lady so that London Bridge will never fall...
Except - that's not really true.
It makes a good story though.
Let's start with the older version of the poem. Now its a rhyme about a bridge that's in need of repair and the higher and higher quality items that are used to build it better until we're using silver and gold to build our bridge (and hiring someone to guard all that silver and gold for the low, low price of a pipe (though one wonders what was in the pipe if it would keep him up all night?)) Also, London Bridge isn't the only bridge with a children's song about it falling down. Before London Bridge was even built there are records of the same kind of song in France, Germany, Italy and Denmark. Korea, far from London Bridge, has a similar song and game as well.
Children singing about the crumpling infrastructure apparently isn't anything new.
Don't give up yet though. London Bridge might have triggered children into singing about its dark shadow beyond the childhood need to see things fall apart around them.
In 1014 (or thereabouts) London Bridge was supposedly badly damaged in a Viking raid (at least that's what some of the texts from that time claimed). There were also several fires in the 1600s, including the Great Fire of 1666 (its gonna be a hot time in the old town tonight) which badly damaged the bridge.
London Bridge had a lot of reasons to fall down and in 1831 it finally did - though it was less a 'fall 'and more a demolition as it was considered cheaper to simply build a new one instead of repair the old.
As for the 'fair lady'? There are several theories about her, from a rich patron to the Virgin Mary. For my money? It's the River Lea, which is a tributary of the Thames and could easily be seen as being 'locked up' when the bridge closed over it.
So was it a ghost story for nothing?
Not - just yet. In 2007, just in time for Halloween, the BBC News reported excavations under London Bridge were turning up bones - and hauntings. There might not be bodies walled into the foundations to keep the bridge standing - but London Bridge saw its fair share of deaths, including the heads of criminals and those out of favor with the crown, that got stuck on spikes along its walls. The children's rhyme might not be as spooky as hoped - but London Bridge itself has no intention of slacking.
