Talk:Rub-a-dub-dub

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there is more interesting stuff to say about this poem. I found this article searching the web to find out the history of the rhyme, but wikipedia didn't have much. I did find this interesting bit, but since i'm not sure of it's copyright history i'm shoving it here so it can be cleaned up.

from http://omega.cohums.ohio-state.edu/mailing_lists/CLA-L/1998/11/0627.php

And I quote, from _The Annotated Mother Goose_:

Rub-a-dub-dub, Three men in a tub, And how do you think they got there?* The butcher, the baker, The candle-stick maker, They all jumped out of a rotten potato, 'Twas enough to make a man stare.

  • (Footnote:) "This line is sometimes given as 'And who do you think they be?' The last line is then given as "Turn 'em out, knaves all three!' ....the earliest printed version gives a rather different picture of the three tradesmen:

Hey rub-a-dub-dub, ho! three maids in a tub, And who do you think were there? The butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker, And all of them gone to the fair.

'Apparently,' say the editors of _The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes_, they have been found in a place where no respectable townfolk should be, watching a dubious side-show at the local fair.'

The word Knave is synonmyous with Jack or Journeyman.