Media   

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.

Comments are provided by Facebook, please ensure you are signed in here to see them

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...

Read More

Other Subjects

Sir Arthur Sullivan

Sir Arthur Sullivan

Composer With W. S. Gilbert wrote the Savoy Operas, including The Mikado and The Pirates of Penzance. Sullivan also wrote Onward Christian Soldiers and The Lost Chord, which was the first phonogr...

Person, Music / songs, Seriously Famous

1 memorial
Sir Yehudi Menuhin

Sir Yehudi Menuhin

Born in New York, child of recent immigrants, achieved fame as a violinist at age 7. Spent most of his career in Britain, becoming a British citizen in 1985. Initially working in the classics, as p...

Person, Music / songs, Seriously Famous, Germany, USA

1 memorial
Sidney Bechet

Sidney Bechet

Saxophonist, clarinetist and composer. Born in New Orleans. He was an outstanding clarinetist in his teens and toured Europe with Will Marion Cook's Syncopated Orchestra. In London he was imprisone...

Person, Music / songs, France, USA

1 memorial
Steve Marriott

Steve Marriott

Musician and songwriter. Part of the original line-up of the Small Faces group, writing or co-writing most of their hits. In 1968 he left the group, storming off stage during a disastrous live perf...

Person, Music / songs

1 memorial