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Pop goes the weasel

Categories: Music / songs

World Wide Words provides the following explanation:
Some of the references are now quite opaque, but we can take a fair shot at a few. In the second verse, the City Road was, still is, a well-known street in London, more than a mile long. The Eagle was a famous public house and music hall, which lay near the east end of the road on the corner of Shepherdess Walk; this had started its life as a tea-garden, but was turned into a music hall in 1825 (one of the very first); it ended its days as a Salvation Army centre and was pulled down in 1901. However, it was replaced by another pub, which still exists under the same name.

The City Road had a pawnbroker’s shop near its west end and to pop was a well-known phrase at the time for pawning something. So the second verse says that visiting the Eagle causes one’s money to vanish, necessitating a trip up the City Road to Uncle to raise some cash. But what was the weasel that was being pawned? Nobody is sure. Some suggest it was a domestic or tailor’s flat-iron, a small item easy to carry. My own guess is that it’s rhyming slang: weasel and stoat = coat. Either way, it seems to have been a punning reinterpretation of the catch line from the older dance.

This section lists the memorials where the subject on this page is commemorated:
Pop goes the weasel

Commemorated ati

Eagle Tavern - song

Up and down the City Road In and out the Eagle That's the way the money goe...

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Other Subjects

Music Hall Guild of Great Britain and America

Music Hall Guild of Great Britain and America

This organisation seems to incorporate the Theatre and Film Guild of Great Britain and America. Wikipedia gives an overview of this charity's activities. 2023: the Guild let us know that "we have ...

Group, Music / songs, Theatre

10 memorials
Peter (Dino) Dines

Peter (Dino) Dines

Keyboards player.  Born Hertford.  A member of T-Rex from late 1973 to 1977.

Person, Music / songs

1 memorial
Dennis Brain

Dennis Brain

Classical horn-player.  Born London into a family of horn-players.  Killed aged 36 when the sports car he was driving crashed in Hatfield, on the way back to London from an engagement in Edinburgh.

Person, Music / songs

1 memorial
Thomas Attwood

Thomas Attwood

Composer and organist at St Paul's Cathedral and the Chapel Royal. Sponsored by the Prince of Wales (later King George IV) to study in Naples and in Vienna with Mozart. Died at home where the plaqu...

Person, Music / songs

1 memorial
Sir Charles Stanford

Sir Charles Stanford

Composer, music teacher, and conductor. Born Dublin as Charles Villiers Stanford. Appointed Professor of Composition at the Royal College of Music in 1883, a position he held for the rest of his li...

Person, Music / songs, Ireland

1 memorial