You long time readers may remember back when I was doing posts on nursery rhyme origins with many of them being used to pass messages to the commoners about what the royals were up to. Today's post is about the origin of Rub-a-dub-dub which wasn't the first version but the tamed down one that made it into Mother Goose.The first known version was from 1798 and ran:
Hey! rub-a-dub, ho! rub-a-dub, 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.
The tub reference is about an attraction featuring what today would be called a peep show or a venue offering lap dances and the upper class trade folk ogling them. I'm betting next time you hear/read that rhyme you will smile at the memory of the first version.
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