Sing a Song of Sixpence

Interesting Asides

Sing a Song of Sixpence has been used by Agatha Christie as the premise for a Miss Marple mystery entitled, “A Pocket Full of Rye.” The story progresses as one character after another is murdered. A financier (a stand-in for the king) is found dead with a pocket full of grain, his wife (the queen) is poisoned at teatime in the parlor, and the maid is found strangled with a clothespin on her nose. Miss Marple, remembering her nursery rhymes, recognizes the pattern and sets out to find the perpetrator, the blackbird of the crime.

In an odd turn of events, the rhyme also has a connection to the original Pennsylvania Station in New York City. Stanford White, an architect with the firm, McKim, Mead and White (designers of the station), once held a soiree that has come to be known as the, “Pie Girl Dinner.” As dessert was being served, the waiters began to chant, “Sing a song of sixpence.” A large “pie” was wheeled out, and out flew several canaries, as did one sixteen-year-old girl, rather scantily clad. The incident was kept relatively quiet at the time. However, details were made public at the trial of Harry K. Thaw. Thaw murdered White in a state of rage after finding out about White’s involvement with another young woman, Evelyn Nesbit, whom Thaw had married. Details of White’s notorious debauchery were used in the trial by the defense. (See http://www.geocities.com/~jimlowe/piegirl/piedex.html and http://www.albany.edu/faculty/hamm/ahis292z/thaw/.)

In addition, several misleading interpretations of the rhyme have made their way onto the Internet. Snopes.com provides an interpretation that at first glance could be plausible. The site details, line by line, how “Sing a Song of Sixpence,” is in actuality a “coded message” used by the pirate Blackbeard to recruit crew for his voyages. The attentive reader finds the link that debunks this entirely, which serves as a warning against believing all that one sees on the Internet. Nonetheless, others refer to the Blackbeard-Sixpence connection. (See http://www.snopes2.com/lost/sixpence.htm)