Origins: Ben Backstay and Oranges and Lemons?

Subject: Origins: Ben Backstay and Oranges and Lemons?
From: Joybell
Date: 11 Jan 04 - 07:31 PM

While in the North of Victoria, Australia, I came across a lady who sang me a song she remembered from her childhood spent in north-west New South Wales. It was sung while playing the game most of us know as "Oranges and Lemons". The game was the same as we all remember it - Two children make an arch and the rest pass through. A child is selected at random to have his/her head chopped off by the arch and he/she is then asked to chose between an orange and a lemon. The victim lines up behind the child, making the arch, who is either an orange or a lemon. At the end there is a tug of war.
My informant's game differed only in that the choice was between a Silver Cherry and a Golden Apple.
The song was:
Chip, chop cherry (pronounced chairy - but they knew it was cherry)
The man from the dairy
Chip, chop the last man's head, head, off.

The chorus of the song "Ben Backstay" by Charles Dibdin, seems similiar. It's not in the Data base. It's on a thread as sung by Burl Ives but it lacks the chorus. The full song can be found at
http://www.contemplator.com/sea/backstay.html>
Did I really manage that at last?

Has anyone come across this variation of "Oranges and Lemons" and is it conected with "Ben Backstay"? Could the "man from the dairy" have once been from Derry?
Just wondering Joy

Subject: RE: Origins: Ben Backstay and Oranges and Lemons?
From: GUEST,Hugh Jampton
Date: 12 Jan 04 - 07:22 AM

Joybell,
       There was a street game played by the children in England many moons ago similar to what you describe. Two children formed an arch and the other children passed beneath in a circle singing the traditional song "Oranges and Lemons". On the word "head" sung with passion in the last verse the children forming the arch brought their arms down over the head of the unfortunate child who was before them who was then "it" and he or she would perform a forfeit or something. The game would then continue.

Last Verse:-
"Here comes a candle to light you to bed"
"Here comes a chopper to chop off your HEAD!!"
I have never seen a connection between this game or song and "Benjamin Backstay".

Subject: RE: Origins: Ben Backstay and Oranges and Lemons?
From: Joybell
Date: 12 Jan 04 - 07:42 AM

Thanks Hugh, Yes that's similiar to the way we played "Oranges and Lemons" in Melbourne,Australia in the 1950s. It was mainly played at Birthday parties. We finished it with a tug of war, however, as in the "Chip Chop Cherry" game. We only sang one verse:

Oranges and lemons
The bells of Saint Clemens
I owe you a farthing.
When shall I pay you?
Today or tomorrow?
Chip chop the last man's head, head (as many "heads" as we needed to claim the victim we wanted) OFF! Joy

Subject: RE: Origins: Ben Backstay and Oranges and Lemons?
From: Joybell
Date: 18 Aug 05 - 10:11 PM

This one is still niggling at me. Since I first posted this question I've found another reference, here in Victoria, Aus, to the "Chip Chop Cherry" variant of "Oranges and Lemons". Another woman who sang and played it as a child. The slight difference is that the choices for the "captured" child were between a golden apple and a silver pear - which raises the question about a link between this song and other references, in folklore, to magic fruit.
Anyone out there have any ideas?
Cheers, Joy

Subject: RE: Origins: Ben Backstay and Oranges and Lemons?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 18 Aug 05 - 11:46 PM

Joybell, I have always pronounced 'cherry' to rhyme with chair-ie. And I'm not Aussie.

Alice Gomme, "Traditional Games of England, Scotland and Ireland," part 2, pp. 25-35, has 26 versions, but no cherries.
Halliwell (1846, clxix) has "the song on the bells of Derby on football morning" (Found no Derry):

Pancake and fritters,
Say All Saints and St. Peter's;
When the ball come,
Say the bells of St. Alkmum;
At two they will throw,
Says Saint Werabo;
O! very well,
Says little Michel.

Fritters - St. Peter's?

Gomme goes on to speculate: "Oranges and lemons were, in all probability, originally meant t mean the colours of the two contesting parties, and not the fruits of their names. [I don't think that likely]

Gomme doesn't have much to say about the 'chop - chop,' but it appears in several rhymes:

Here comes a candle to light you to bed,
Here comes a chop'n bill to chop off your head- Chop- chop- chop- chop.
Another:
Here come some great candles
To light you to bed,
Here come some great choppers
To chop off your head.
etc., etc.

The possible relationship to the humorous "Benjamin Backstay" is interesting. Dibdin's songs were widespread in the States and Ccanada, and one would presume Australia as well. They were sold widely on penny songsheets, many without attribution to Dibdin.

Coincidentally??- a Benjamin Backstay, a burglar, age 20, was sentenced to death at the Old Bailey in 1827.

Subject: RE: Origins: Ben Backstay and Oranges and Lemons?
From: Joybell
Date: 19 Aug 05 - 10:06 PM

Thanks Q. Any thoughts on this are most welcome. We don't normally pronounce "cherry" as "chairee", but of course songs and poems have their own rules here as elsewhere.
The "candels and choppers" rhymes were popular here too. Also Dibdin songs.
Thank you for your research. The burglar coincidence is an interesting one. Regards, Joy

Subject: RE: Origins: Ben Backstay and Oranges and Lemons?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 19 Aug 05 - 11:08 PM

I checked Webster's Collegiate to see what they had for pronunciation.
Chair- 'char; cherry- 'char-e. Thus the preferred American pronunciation is the same for both syllables.

Looked in the Opies' volume "The Singing Game" and found nothing more that was pertinent to your post.

Subject: RE: Origins: Ben Backstay and Oranges and Lemons?
From: Joybell
Date: 26 Aug 05 - 07:59 PM

Thanks again, Q. I'm married to an American so I understand what Webster means. True-Love and I have long discussions on the way we hear and pronounce different sounds.

The puzzle in this song, as I see it, is how the "man from the dairy" got in there in the first place - in Australia - that is.
"Dairy" doesn't rhyme with "cherry" in Australian use. I wondered for a time if it might be a corruption of "The man from Derry" which does rhyme the way we say both words. Was there "a man from Derry" who had something to do with the chopping off of heads, I wonder?
Of course the rhyme might have come here via America - but still, why the dairy anyway? Cheers, Joy