by Chris Harris
There are nursery rhymes we remember because they’re comforting, and others we remember because they’re oddly hard to shake. Oranges and Lemons sits somewhere between the two. It’s light, rhythmic, and instantly familiar — the kind of song that seems designed to be chanted in playgrounds without much thought. For most of our childhoods, that’s exactly how it functioned.
Until you reach the ending.
Because tucked away in that sing-song rhythm is a line that, when you stop and actually listen to it, is startlingly blunt. The rhyme doesn’t trail off with a chorus of happy bells. It ends with the unmistakable image of someone losing their head. Not metaphorically. Literally.
Here’s the version most of us recognise:
Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement’s
You owe me five farthings, say the bells of St Martin’s
When will you pay me? say the bells of Old Bailey
When I grow rich, say the bells of Shoreditch
When will that be? say the bells of Stepney
I do not know, says the great bell of Bow
Here comes a candle to light you to bed
Here comes a chopper to chop off your head!
Chop-chop-chop-chop the last man’s dead.
The origins of Oranges and Lemons go back several centuries and are tangled up with London itself. The rhyme references the bells of different churches, anchoring it firmly in the geography of the city. In that world, public executions weren’t abstract ideas or distant history. They were communal events, portrayed brilliantly in Dickens novels. They happened in the open, within walking distance of markets, homes, and churches. Death wasn’t hidden away; it was woven into everyday life. By the time executions became private and were reframed as a necessary evil rather than a kind of spectacle, the rhyme was already deeply entrenched in childhood.
That context matters, because it helps explain why violence could slip so easily into children’s culture without causing alarm. The rhyme wasn’t trying to shock. It was reflecting a society where harsh realities were visible, routine, and unavoidably shared. Children didn’t grow up in a carefully curated emotional bubble. They grew up watching the adult world as it was.
What makes Oranges and Lemons particularly unsettling is how neatly rhyme and repetition soften its meaning. Sung aloud, the words flow so smoothly that the content barely registers. The rhythm does the work of distraction. Repetition dulls the edge. Violence becomes part of the music rather than something to interrogate.
Most people can sing the rhyme from memory, yet very few stop to consider what the ending actually implies. The words have been carried along for generations, detached from meaning, preserved through habit rather than reflection. We sang it because everyone sang it. That was reason enough.
But here’s the interesting modern twist: it hasn’t really been “banned” in any dramatic sense. It’s still widely known, still taught, still sung — yet in a lot of nursery or early-years settings, adults quietly edit it. The bells and the candle remain; the chopper sometimes disappears. Not because of some organised crusade, more because contemporary childhood has become a bit more curated, a bit more sensitive to what feels needlessly brutal in a sing-song context.
And that, in a way, proves the point. Today it’s hard to imagine a children’s song ending so matter-of-factly in execution. Modern childhood culture tends to shield children from explicit brutality, even when the world itself remains violent — and even when social media makes it feel more prevalent than ever. We prefer metaphors, softness, and moral lessons that resolve neatly. The idea of casually singing about beheading would feel jarring, if not unacceptable.
And that’s what makes Oranges and Lemons such a fascinating cultural artefact. It’s a reminder that the past wasn’t gentler; it was just more direct, and often more brutal. Violence wasn’t disguised; it was normalised.
But those of us brought up on it, we’re all okay, we survived, because we were brought up in a world of common sense, where ultimately we loved the comforting rhythm and never sat and considered the words as they were immaterial and we didn’t comprehend heads being chopped off as a reality and if we did, e were told they weren’t!
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#Nursery Rhyme #Oranges and Lemons #Childhood #Classic Nursery Rhyme
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