page_title: London Bridge Is Falling Down
section_title: Origins
hierarchical_section_title: London Bridge Is Falling Down / Origins
caption_attribution_description: English: A page from Tommy Thumbs Pretty Song Book (1744) showing the beginning of "London Bridge is Falling Down".
context_page_description: "London Bridge Is Falling Down" is a traditional English nursery rhyme and singing game, which is found in different versions all over the world. It deals with the depredations of London Bridge and attempts, realistic or fanciful, to repair it. It may date back to bridge rhymes and games of the Late Middle Ages, but the earliest records of the rhyme in English are from the seventeenth century. The lyrics were first printed in close to their modern form in the mid-eighteenth century and became popular, particularly in Britain and the United States during the 19th century.
  The modern melody was first recorded in the late 19th century and the game resembles arch games of the Middle Ages, but seems to have taken its modern form in the late nineteenth century. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 502. Several explanations have been advanced to explain the meaning of the rhyme and the identity of the "fair lady" of the refrain. The rhyme is one of the best known in the world and has been referenced in a variety of works of literature and popular culture.
context_section_description: Similar rhymes can be found across Europe, pre-dating the records in England. These include "Knippelsbro Går Op og Ned" from Denmark, "Die Magdeburger Brück" from Germany, "pont chus" from sixteenth-century France; and "Le porte", from fourteenth-century Italy. It is possible that the rhyme was acquired from one of these sources and then adapted to fit the most famous bridge in England.
  One of the earliest references to the rhyme in English is in the comedy The London Chaunticleres, printed in 1657, but probably written about 1636, in which the dairy woman Curds states that she had "danced the building of London-Bridge" at the Whitsun Ales in her youth, although no words or actions are mentioned. Widespread familiarity with the rhyme is suggested by its use by Henry Carey in his satire Namby Pamby (1725), as:
  Namby Pamby is no Clown,
  London Bridge is broken down:
  
  Now he courts the gay Ladee
  
  Dancing o'er The Lady-Lee.
  The oldest extant version could be that recalled by a correspondent to the Gentleman's Magazine in 1823, which he claimed to have heard from a woman who was a child in the reign of Charles II (r. 1660–85) and had the lyrics:
  London Bridge is broken down,
  Dance over the Lady Lea;
  
  London Bridge is broken down,
  With a gay lady (la-dee).
  The earliest printed English version is in the oldest extant collection of nursery rhymes, Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, printed by John Newbery in London (c. 1744), beginning with the following text:
  London Bridge
  
  Is Broken down,
  
  Dance over my Lady Lee.
  
  London Bridge
  
  Is Broken down
  
  With a gay Lady.
  A version from James Ritson's Gammer Gurton's Garland (1784) is similar but replaces the last verse with:
  Build it up with stone so strong,
  
  Dance o'er my Lady lee,
  
  Huzza! 'twill last for ages long,
  
  With a gay lady.
caption: The first page of the rhyme from an 1815 edition of Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book (c. 1744).
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