"Oranges and Lemons" is a traditional English nursery rhyme, folksong, and singing game which refers to the bells of several churches, all within or close to the City of London. It is listed in the Roud Folk Song Index as No 13190. The earliest known printed version appeared c. 1744.
The rhyme has been referenced in a variety of works of literature and popular culture. The bells of St Clement Danes (one of many London churches associated with the rhyme) play the tune every day at 9am, noon, 3pm and 6pm.
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The tune is reminiscent of change ringing, and the intonation of each line is said to correspond with the distinct sounds of each church's bells. Today, the bells of St Clement Danes ring out the tune of the rhymeâÂÂas reported in 1940 the church's playing of the tune was interrupted during World War II due to Nazi bombing of the church during the Blitz. As is the case with almost all traditional songs, there were minor variations in the melody. Collector of British folk songs James Madison Carpenter recorded two versions of the song in the 1930s which are now available on the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library website: one in Garsington, Oxfordshire, and another somewhere in either Yorkshire or Lincolnshire. These recordings show slight melodic and lyrical variations.
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The song is used in a children's singing game with the same name, in which the players file, in pairs, through an arch made by two of the players (made by having the players face each other, raise their arms over their head, and clasp their partners' hands). The challenge comes during the final lines beginning "Here comes a chopper to chop off your head"; and on the final repetition of "chop" in the last line, the children forming the arch drop their arms to catch the pair of children currently passing through. These are then "out" and must form another arch next to the existing one. In this way, the series of arches becomes a steadily lengthening tunnel through which each set of two players has to run faster and faster to escape in time.
Alternative versions of the game include: children going through one at a time and when caught "out" by the last rhyme must stand behind one of the children forming the original arch, instead of forming additional arches; and children forming "arches" may bring their hands down for each word of the last line, while the children passing through the arches run as fast as they can to avoid being caught on the last word.
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:
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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 title of a square dance, published from the third (1657) edition onwards of The Dancing Master. 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 London churches is not always clear, but the following have been suggested, along with some factors that may have influenced the accompanying statements:
Bob Chilcott's "London Bells", the third movement of his Songs and Cries of London Town (2001) is a setting for choir of the song's version from Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book.
Benjamin Till composed music based upon the nursery rhyme which was performed in 2009 at St Mary-le-Bow, London, to commemorate 150 years of the Palace of Westminster's great bell, Big Ben.