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As promised, today I thought we would have a look at that general belief that the rhyme Ring a Ring a Roses tells the story of The Great Plague of London in 1665. Well, I spent a day studying the symptoms of The Bubonic Plague, which wasn't much fun, and trying to match them with the well known rhyme. That seemed to me to be a logical place to start. This is what I found for Pop Goes the Weasel [NB: This is the British version of the rhyme, Americans may remember different words]:

Ring-a-ring o' roses,
A pocketful of posies;
A-tishoo! A-tishoo!
We all fall down.

This rhyme usually accompanies a dancing game that ends with all the children falling to the ground, getting their clothes muddy and going home to a clout round the ear. Or at least that's how I remember it.

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Pop Goes the Weasel, like all of my books revealing the fascinating history behind much of our popular culture, presented me with the usual problem of content and how to weave seventy thousand words around a handful of well-known nursery rhymes without losing either the reader's (or my own)  interest. It is a useful rule of thumb (see Shaggy Dogs and Black Sheep to find out why we use that expression) for any writer, aspiring or otherwise, that if the words you have don't interest yourself when you have a read through at the end of the day, then it is fair to assume it won't interest anybody else either. So work on it some more or delete it. This is the reason it takes a writer all day to produce what can be read in ten minutes (one thousand words or 3 pages). Writing a book in real time, as Truman Capote once said, is not writing, it's typing, and that is worth remembering. But tomorrow I will reveal the process of writing and releasing a full length book in more detail. For now, it is back to Pop Goes the Weasel.

After discovering the wonderful real story of Humpty Dumpty I immediately started to outline an idea for a full book of history, hanging the stories on something we all immediately recognize: nursery rhymes. I felt that if I could find enough content then it would make a great book, but without dragging the text out for the sake of the word count. I felt that more than a thousand words on each subject would start to bore me, so what must that be like for you, dear reader? I wasn't going to put either of us through that so it meant I needed at least seventy rhymes. We ended up with over a hundred because some of the stories just didn't justify a thousand words so that wasn't a rule, it was only my guideline. There are no rules in book writing, apart from if it doesn't interest you yourself at the end of the day then...... well, you know the rest.

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Yesterday I explained some of the difficulties of becoming, or being, a professional writer and gave an example of how the initial germ of an idea for a book, by no means the hardest part of a project but definitely up there in the top three, can appear from anywhere and develop from a simple pub conversation. With Red Herrings and White Elephants and Shaggy Dogs and Black Sheep the hardest part, after the initial idea, was thinking of the expression or phrase, known as idioms, in the first place. There are possibly over two thousand that have become part of our accepted language (where the words we actually use mean nothing at all in the context of a conversation we are having and yet we instinctively know what they mean, i.e. Straight from the Horse's Mouth). Yet if we sit down and try to come up with a dozen, we will all be struggling after only a few. The best way to do that research was to listen out for them in action, so to speak, and so I spent the following two years with a notebook jotting down every single time I was "Barking up the Wrong Tree", visiting a "Bucket Shop" with a "Chip on my Shoulder" or had learned something "On the Grapevine." In the event I tracked down the source of over a thousand of them covered by those first two books, each one traceable to a single, or series, of real events in our rich history.

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As a professional writer, one of the daftest things to admit to a stranger is that you are a professional writer. It's possibly the worst of all professions to own up to at a party, apart from perhaps, "I am an acquiring editor at a publishing company." (I imagine)

The reason is that virtually everybody believes they have a book in them, or could be a writer of some kind, and want your help/advice/time/patience/use of your contacts/a way in. There have been times when I simply lie as say I am a lecturer/marketing manager/teacher or, and this is my own personal favourite, simply bone idle. But that can lead to looking arrogant and foolish should somebody know the truth about you which is later revealed. Internationally bestselling author to boot. And now, "So what do you write about," then, ‘"How do you do your research," followed by, "How long does it take to write a book," and, "Where do you get your ideas for a book in the first place," inevitably followed up by over 50% of people with the dreaded line, "I'm writing a book myself - if I wrote something would you look at it and give me some advice?"

I always reply, "Sure, of course I will," which is usually responded to with, "That's great, what shall I write about? And this is where I finally loose patience. "Ah ha," I say, "Now that's up to you isn't it." That's what a writer does: Has the idea, the long, long blank pages ahead and the dogged persistence to fill those pages with something others may find interesting enough to pay you for. (You could substitute the words dogged persistence here with work ethic, self discipline, or effort, but, and take my word for it, it is dogged persistence.) Books don't write themselves. Editors don't write them either; they contribute and improve, but only writers write them. By the way, despite offering many hundreds of times, nobody has ever sent me anything in the end, presumably because they can never think of what to write about, apart from their life story.

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I first had the idea of studying the history of nursery rhymes about ten years ago now. But at that time, the idea of trawling through history to try and discover the origins of many of our favourite little children's nursery rhymes and their meanings, obvious or hidden, was one I didn't relish to begin with, to be honest. After all, what could possibly be interesting about a short, fat boy who must have been called either humpty, or dumpty, who lived a long, long time ago and who fell off his wall? Or, for that matter, how much fun can you have with three blind mice being chased around the kitchen by a farmer's wife? Surely that has happened on farms across the land since knives were first carved from flint stone. And why would anybody, in this case me, want to create a book full of stories like the one about a little boy called Jack Horner who shoved his hand into a pie and stole some plumbs.

But, instead, this has turned out to be the most rewarding piece of work I have done so far. Because once it becomes obvious that many nursery rhymes have been written about, or evolved from, particular historic events and then used as a way to pass important news around the countryside, during an age when modern communication was limited simply to word of mouth, then the research becomes a fascinating study into our way of life, in bygone years. For example, would you expect Humpty Dumpty to be the name of one of King Charles I's cannons located at Colchester Castle, scene of the Siege of Colchester during the summer of 1648 as the English Civil War exploded into violence? It was operated by a gunner called One Eyed Thompson who successfully kept Cromwell's forces at bay until they managed to blow it off the wall, allowing the Parliamentarians to approach the town. The Kings Cavalry (the horses) and the King's Infantry (the men) then faced a race against time to repair the cannon but failed. An important battle was lost and a turning point in history then marked by a rhyme, soon repeated in every hamlet and village across the land as news spread.

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Albert Jack is our guest blogger during the week of September 28. If you have any questions for Albert Jack, add a comment to any of his posts. Here is some more information about Pop Goes the Weasel:

From the international bestselling author of Red Herrings and White Elephants-a curious guide to the hidden histories of classic nursery rhymes.

Who was Mary Quite Contrary, or Georgie Porgie? How could Hey Diddle Diddle offer an essential astronomy lesson? Do Jack and Jill actually represent the execution of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette? And if Ring Around the Rosie isn't about the plague, then what is it really about?

This book is a quirky, curious, and sometimes sordid look at the truth behind popular nursery rhymes that uncovers the strange tales that inspired them-from Viking raids to political insurrection to smuggling slaves to freedom.