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I JUST LEARNED THE TRUE MEANING OF "POP GOES THE WEASEL." IT'S ABOUT PAWN SHOPS.
To "pop" was to pawn, and the weasel is another word for an iron. In the mid-nineteenth century, most of the English working poor visited the pawn shops thirty times a year to pawn something to make it to the next paycheck. (Kind of like now.) This meaning makes no sense with the American lyrics, but perfect sense with one of the more common English versions:
DID I JUST BLOW YOUR MIND???
To "pop" was to pawn, and the weasel is another word for an iron. In the mid-nineteenth century, most of the English working poor visited the pawn shops thirty times a year to pawn something to make it to the next paycheck. (Kind of like now.) This meaning makes no sense with the American lyrics, but perfect sense with one of the more common English versions:
Half a pound of tuppenny rice,
Half a pound of treacle.
That’s the way the money goes,
Pop! goes the weasel.
DID I JUST BLOW YOUR MIND???
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Which seems to me like it must have been a back composition by someone who knew the chorus and none of the rest of the context and so thought it was actually about a literal weasel.
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