Eeper Weeper
"Eeper Weeper" or "Heeper Peeper" is a popular English nursery rhyme and skipping song that tells the story of a chimney sweep who kills his second wife and hides her body up a chimney. The rhyme has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 13497.[1]
Lyrics
- Eeper Weeper, chimney sweeper,
- Had a wife but couldn't keep her.
- Had another, didn't love her,
- Up the chimney he did shove her.[2]
Origins
Iona and Peter Opie noted that the rhyme had been used in this form from at least the first decade of the twentieth century.[2] A verse collected from Aberdeen, Scotland and published in 1868 had the words:
- Peter, my neeper,
- Had a wife,
- And he couidna' keep her,
- He pat her i' the wa',
- And lat a' the mice eat her.
This may be an older version of "Eeper Neeper" and of "Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater".[3]
Notes
- ^ "Roud Folksong Index S299766 Eaver weaver, chimney sweeper". Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. English Folk Dance and Song Society. Retrieved May 20, 2016.
- ^ a b I. Opie and P. Opie, Children's games with things: marbles, fivestones, throwing and catching, gambling, hopscotch, chucking and pitching, ball-bouncing, skipping, tops and tipcat (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 180.
- ^ I. Opie and P. Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), pp. 333-4.
