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John Byrne
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Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
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Posted: 02 September 2025 at 4:16pm | IP Logged | 1 post reply

LINK

My favorite nursery rhyme from childhood. No wonder I was always a nervous wreck!

(Incidentally, I learned it in the present tense. Say the bells…)

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William Costello
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Posted: 03 September 2025 at 12:38am | IP Logged | 2 post reply

It's also the name of the XTC album released in 1989. One of the first CDs I purchased when I shifted away from album to the CD format.



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John Byrne
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Grumpy Old Guy

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Posted: 04 September 2025 at 10:55am | IP Logged | 3 post reply

Not exactly my point.
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Mike Benson
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Posted: 04 September 2025 at 11:22am | IP Logged | 4 post reply

Here comes the chopper! 

Interesting to me is the fact that, when these morbid and violent rhymes were first conceived, there really was a chopper!  
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John Byrne
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Grumpy Old Guy

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Posted: 04 September 2025 at 11:28am | IP Logged | 5 post reply

“Choppers” lasted a long time. The French last used the guillotine the same year the original STAR WARS was released!
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William Costello
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Posted: 12 September 2025 at 3:44pm | IP Logged | 6 post reply

If you ask the Google AI where XTC got the name of the album from, GOOGLE AI says this:

"The title for XTC's 1989 album Oranges & Lemons comes from an old English nursery rhyme, the same source referenced in the lyrics of their previous album's song, "Ballet for a Rainy Day"The bright, psychedelic nature of the album's music and album art also contributed to the choice, evoking vivid, contrasting colors."

Is that actually true? Who knows? Saying that, I was actually encouraged to use Micorsoft CoPilot (another AI engine) when I was developing questions for an online Master's course last Spring. It was a little scary when the answers came in from CoPilot and the answers were basically correct.
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Jim Muir
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Posted: 12 September 2025 at 3:57pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply

Could be worse, JB... at least your favourite nursery rhyme
wasn't Ring-a-ring-o-roses.

(Having said that, pretty much any olde English rhyme has a
dark background to it!)
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John Byrne
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Grumpy Old Guy

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Posted: 12 September 2025 at 4:47pm | IP Logged | 8 post reply

Yes. “Nursery Rhymes”, like Bugs Bunny cartoons or the Flintstones, were not originally created for children. Many of them were political commentary at a time when making such could be as much as your life was worth.
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Peter Martin
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Posted: 12 September 2025 at 8:33pm | IP Logged | 9 post reply

We used to sing this at playschool and IIRC there was some kind of dance/actions that involved passing through a pair of kids' arms and ended with them chopping down on the poor unfortunate passing through at that point ... May not be remembering this 100% correctly though. It was a long time ago!
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Bill Collins
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Posted: 13 September 2025 at 5:15am | IP Logged | 10 post reply

Sounds similar to my vague memory Peter.
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James Woodcock
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Posted: 13 September 2025 at 6:55am | IP Logged | 11 post reply

Yep, we did that too.
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