There Was a Crooked Man
"There Was a Crooked Man" is an English nursery rhyme. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 1826. Origin. The rhyme was first recorded in print by James Orchard Halliwell in 1842: It gained popularity in the early twentieth century. One legend suggests that this nursery rhyme originated in the once prosperous wool merchant’s village of Lavenham, about 70 miles northeast of London, having been inspired by its multicolored half-timbered houses leaning at irregular angles as if they are supporting each other. Other sources state that the poem originates from British  history, specifically the period of the Scottish Stuart King Charles I of England (1600–1649). Popular culture. The crooked man is reputed to be the Scottish General Sir Alexander Leslie, who signed a covenant securing religious and political freedom for Scotland. The "crooked stile" in the poem was the alliance between the parliaments of England and Scotland or the border between the two, depending on the source. "They all lived together in a little crooked house" refers to the fact that the English and Scots had at last come to an agreement, despite the continuing great animosity between the two peoples , who nonetheless had to live with each other due to their common border. The great recoinage around 1696 led to sixpence coins that were made of very thin silver and were easily bent, becoming "crooked". The 1964 hit single "Don't Let the Rain Come Down (Crooked Little Man)" by The Serendipity Singers incorporates the rhyme. The rhyme is recited by Oliver Barrett (Ryan O'Neal) in Oliver's Story (film) , the sequel of the classic Love Story (1970 film), as a philosophical reflection about his "crooked life" since the death of his beloved "Jenny" (Jennifer Cavalleri/Ali MacGraw). The Crooked  Man rhyme is featured as a possessed/haunted object in "The Conjuring 2". The rhyme is recited in "Fargo" season 3 by V. M. Varga (played by David Thewlis). The title was used for the 1960 Norman Wisdom film, "There Was a Crooked Man", as a pun for a "crooked" politician. SCP-783, an entry for the SCP Foundation, a fictional organization that contains anomalous entities and phenomena, is loosely based off of the rhyme. SCP-783 is portrayed as an enigmatic predatory mutilator that twists and extends its victims' bodies into unnatural positions. Related writing. "—And He Built a Crooked House —" is a science fiction short story by American writer, Robert A. Heinlein, first published in "Astounding Science Fiction" in February 1941. The house was based on a four-dimensional tesseract, with eight cubical rooms.