I never knew that, but just researched it.... There is much debate regarding the meaning of this rhyme. It is widely believed that the Eagle mentioned in the song refers to the Eagle Tavern near the City Road in North London. Thus, it is easy to assume that originally, the song refers to drinking at the Eagle Tavern. However, there are plenty of theories about the meaning of the last verse, which gives the song’s title as well. It is possible that pop refers to pawns, and thus the lyrics would mean to drink until there’s no money left so people pawn their suits to grab more money (weasel may mean suit in the slang of Cockney, a slang that often used rhymes as a speech form). The song itself...
Yer Weasel is your overcoat (weasel and stoat), and a pawn merchants was known as the pop shop. So you pawned your coat, the one thing you had of value, to buy another pint in the Eagle, which is still there in City Road, Islington, near the Moorfield's eye hospital. Meanwhile, all the missus had to fed the kids with was half a pound of tuppenny rice, and half a pound of treacle. Treacle was cheap because of the Tate and Lyle factory just down the river at Plaistow. Hence... Half a pound of tuppenny rice, Half a pound of treacle. Up and down the City Road, In and out the Eagle, That's the way the money goes, Pop goes the weasel
Someone ****ed that up for us, realised that if you slid a pencil/pen in the top of the packet where the corner was missing you could roll a note around it and pull it out then claim it was short. Management caught on when it started happening to a few people every week and started putting two staples through the packet once sealed.
My old man used to tell me stories of him as a kid and his mates climbing onto the barges at the Tate & Lyle factory and stealing the sugar. They didn’t do it in any organised kind of way, they just used climb on board and eat as much sugar as they could
Yeah, I always thought "Hey Mr Tallyman, tally me banana" was some sort of request for sexual servicing.
Surely even then, you would've had to have opened the envelope to "find that out" before you took it to said management? Unless you had xray vision and say aha look I can see a note's missing and I haven't opened the envelope so fck you! Sorry D I'm gonna have to call bullshit on your bullshit theory
You never seen an actual pay packet have you They had one corner of the flap missing so you could count the notes, this was where the pencil was inserted and a note rolled around it for extraction
I'd guessed he'd never seen these type of pay packets, when I read his comment. There is no need to open the packet to check, which was the whole idea, to open the packet could potentially void any claim you then tried to make about being short changed.
