Hot Cross Buns
"Hot Cross Buns" | |
---|---|
Nursery rhyme | |
Published | c. 1798 |
Songwriter(s) | Unknown |
Hot Cross Buns is an English language nursery rhyme, Easter song, and street cry referring to the spiced English bun known as a hot cross bun, which is associated with the end of Lent and is eaten on Good Friday in various countries. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 13029.
The most common modern version is:[1]
Hot cross buns! |
Origins
The earliest record of the rhyme is in Christmas Box, published in London in 1798.[1] However, there are earlier references to the rhyme as a street cry in London, for example in the Poor Robin's Almanack for 1733, which noted:
Good Friday comes this month, the old woman runs
With one or two a penny hot cross buns.[2]
References
- 1 2 I. Opie and P. Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), p. 197.
- ↑ Charles Hindley, History of the Cries of London: Ancient and Modern (Cambridge University Press, 2011). p. 218.