london bridge is falling down

[20] The music on the first track of the Helloween’s album Walls of Jericho (1985) was also based on “London Bridge Is Falling Down”,[21] and the traditional tune is often
used by English football supporters as the basis for chants.
However, modern translations make it clear that Laing was using the nursery rhyme as a model for his very free translation, and the reference to London Bridge does not appear
at the start of the verse and it is unlikely that this is an earlier version of the nursery rhyme.
[2] In England until the nineteenth century, the song may have been accompanied by a circle dance, but arch games are known to have been common across late medieval Europe.
It is possible that the rhyme was acquired from one of these sources and then adapted to fit the most famous bridge in England.
[18] The final line may have been cited as the inspiration for the title of the 1956 musical My Fair Lady,[19] while the chorus of Brenda Lee’s song My Whole World Is Falling
Down (1963) is loosely based on “London Bridge Is Falling Down”.
“London Bridge Is Falling Down” (also known as “My Fair Lady” or “London Bridge”) is a traditional English nursery rhyme and singing game, which is found in different versions
all over the world.
[2] One of the earliest references to the rhyme in English is in the comedy The London Chaunticleres, printed in 1657, but probably written about 1636,[9] in which the dairy
woman Curds states that she had “danced the building of London-Bridge” at the Whitsun Ales in her youth, although no words or actions are mentioned.
An issue of Blackwood’s Magazine in 1821 noted the rhyme as being sung to the tune of “Nancy Dawson”, now better known as “Nuts in May,” and the same tune was given in Richard
Thomson’s Chronicles of London Bridge (1827).
This may be a late 19th century addition from another game called “Hark the Robbers”,[8] or “Watch and Chain”.
[1] The oldest extant version could be that recalled by a correspondent to the Gentleman’s Magazine in 1823, which he claimed to have heard from a woman who was a child in
the reign of Charles II (r. 1660–1685) and had the lyrics: London Bridge is broken down, Dance over the Lady Lea; London Bridge is broken down, With a gay lay-dee.
It may date back to bridge-related rhymes and games of the Late Middle Ages, but the earliest records of the rhyme in English are from the 17th century.
[2] Legacy By the late 19th century, the rhyme had become one of the most popular and well known in the English-speaking world.
However, the original document detailing the attack was written only about 100 years after what would be a famous event in a highly populated area, leading the majority of
historians to conclude that the account is at least relatively accurate.
The lyrics were first printed in close to their modern form in the mid-18th century and became popular, particularly in Britain and the United States, during the 19th century.
[1] The tune now associated with the rhyme was first recorded in 1879 in the United States in A.H. Rosewig’s Illustrated National Songs and Games.
[2] A version from James Ritson’s Gammer Gurton’s Garland (1784) is also similar but replaces the last verse with: Build it up with stone so strong, Dance o’er my Lady Lee,
Huzza!
[7] The game The rhyme is often used in a children’s singing game, which exists in a wide variety of forms, with additional verses.
[1] Although another version substitutes: London Bridge is broken down, Broken down, broken down…[2] The rhyme is constructed of quatrains in trochaic tetrameter catalectic[3]
(each line made up of four metrical feet of two syllables, with the stress falling on the first syllable in a pair; the last foot in the line missing the unstressed syllable), which is common in nursery rhymes.
[10] The translation of the Norse saga the Heimskringla, published by Samuel Laing in 1844, included a verse by Óttarr svarti, that looks very similar to the nursery rhyme:
London Bridge is broken down.
The Viking attack was on 8 September 1009 (or 1014), the traditional birthday of the Virgin Mary; they burned the bridge but could not take the city, it was protected by the
‘fair lady’.
The earliest printed English version is in the oldest extant collection of nursery rhymes, Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book, printed by John Newbery in London (c. 1744), and
has words very close to that.
The modern melody was first recorded in the late 19th century.
The most frequently used first verse is: London Bridge is falling down, Falling down, falling down, London Bridge is falling down, My fair lady.
In the early 19th century it was decided to replace the bridge with a new construction.

Works Cited

[‘Opie, Iona; Opie, Peter (1985). The Singing Game. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. pp. 61–72. ISBN 0192840193.
1. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g h Opie, Iona; Opie, Peter (1997) [1951]. The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (2nd ed.). Oxford, UK:
Oxford University Press. pp. 270–276. ISBN 0198600887.
2. ^ Lazarus, A.L.; MacLeish, A.; Smith, H.W. (1971). Modern English: A glossary of literature and language. London, UK: Grosset & Dunlap. p. 194. ISBN 0448021315.
3. ^ Turco, Lewis (2000).
The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics (3rd ed.). Lebanon, New Hampshire: University Press of New England. pp. 28–30. ISBN 1-58465-022-2.
4. ^ Browne, R. B. (1982). Objects of Special Devotion: Fetishism in popular culture. Madison, WI: Popular
Press. p. 274. ISBN 087972191X.
5. ^ “search: “502””. Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. Searchable database. English Folk Song and Dance Society. Retrieved 20 April 2021.
6. ^ Fuld, J.J. (2000). The Book of World-Famous Music: Classical, popular,
and folk. London, UK: Courier Dover. p. 337. ISBN 0486414752.
7. ^ Roud, S. (2010). The Lore of the Playground: One hundred years of children’s games, rhymes, & traditions. New York: Random House. pp. 270–271. ISBN 978-1905211517.
8. ^ Hazlitt,
W. Carew (1966). A Manual for the Collector and Amateur of Old English Plays. London, UK: Ayer Publishing. p. 131. ISBN 0833716298.
9. ^ Gibson, Michael (1972). The Vikings. London, UK: Wayland. p. 72. ISBN 0-85340-164-0.
10. ^ Jump up to:a b
c d e Clark, J. (2002). “‘London bridge’ – archaeology of a nursery rhyme” (PDF). London Archaeologist. 9: 338–340.; for the original Old Norse see Sturluson, Snorri. “Ólafs saga helga”. Heimskringla. §13 – via Wikisource.
11. ^ Hagland, J.R.;
Watson, B. (2005). “Fact or folklore: The Viking attack on London Bridge” (PDF). London Archaeologist. 12: 328–333.
12. ^ Sturluson, Snorri; Monsen, Erling; Smith, Albert Hugh (1 May 1990). Heimskringla: The lives of the Norse kings (reprint ed.).
Dover Publications. ISBN 978-0-486-26366-3 – via Google Books.
13. ^ Gomme, A.B. (1894–1898). The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland.
14. ^ “‘Spooky skeletons’ scare builders”. 31 October 2007. Retrieved 20 November 2021.
15. ^
Brown, David J. (2001). Bridges: Three thousand Years of Defying Nature. Saint Paul, Minnesota: MBI. pp. 52–55. ISBN 0760312346.
16. ^ Morris, Marc. A Great and Terrible King: Edward I and the forging of Britain. p. 56.[full citation needed]
17. ^
Raine, C. (2006). T.S. Eliot. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. p. 87. ISBN 0195309936.
18. ^ Studwell, W.E. (1996). The National and Religious Song Reader: Patriotic, traditional, and sacred songs from around the world. London, UK: Routledge.
p. 63. ISBN 0789000997.
19. ^ Kirby, Michael Jack. “Brenda Lee”. Wayback Attack. Retrieved 4 July 2018.
20. ^ “Helloween – Walls of Jericho – Reviews – Encyclopaedia Metallum: The Metal Archives”. Encyclopaedia Metallum: The Metal Archives. Retrieved
14 August 2022.
21. ^ Robson, G. (2000). No One Likes Us, We Don’t Care: The myth and reality of Millwall fandom. Berg. p. 65. ISBN 1859733727.
22. ^ Russell, D. (2004). Looking North: Northern England and the national imagination. Manchester,
UK: Manchester University Press. p. 276. ISBN 0719051789.
Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/scjn/1244774242/’]