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National Pop Goes the Weasel Day

Fun · June 14

A day for the old nursery rhyme and singing game, the tune that jack-in-the-box toys play right before the lid flies open.

National Pop Goes the Weasel Day falls on Monday, June 14, 2027. That is 230 days away.

The song is short, bouncy and almost impossible to forget. In the version most American children learn, a monkey chases a weasel around a mulberry bush, and on the word "pop" the weasel goes. Nobody hums it without bracing slightly for that last line.

It began as an English nursery rhyme and dance tune and crossed the ocean long ago. Its meaning is still argued over. People have offered all sorts of explanations for what the weasel is and why it pops, and none has settled the question. For most listeners, that hardly matters. The tune works because of its timing: a steady build, a tiny pause, then the surprise.

That timing is why the song lives inside the jack-in-the-box. Turn the crank, the melody plays, and the clown springs out on "pop." Children learn to anticipate it and still jump. In playgrounds and classrooms it also works as a circle game, with everyone moving around until the big word, when someone crouches, claps or leaps.

Singing it is the obvious way to mark the day, and it is easy to make a game of it with kids by having them pop up from a squat on cue. Adults may find themselves testing how many verses they actually remember. Most people know one, maybe two, and then the words start to wander.

The melody is simple enough to pick out on a toy piano or a set of glasses with water in them, and the pause before "pop" is the part everyone waits for.

Ways to celebrate

• Sing the rhyme and have everyone jump up on the word pop.
• Wind a jack-in-the-box and try not to flinch.
• Pick out the tune on a piano, ukulele or kazoo.
• Ask relatives which verses they learned as children.
• Play the circle game with kids at a park or backyard.

Dates

Categories: Fun days