Liz-zie Borden Took An Axe ...

[Catbooks]

not sure why it's taken me this long to wonder about this so-called nursery rhyme, and its origins, but it has.

i've searched the forums and haven't come up with much, although you'd think if anyone would know who came up with it, when, and where, it'd be someone here.

all i could find was a post from bobo:

This from The News-Herald. ( Hillsboro, Highland Co., Ohio) Feb. 15, 1894..... "A Boston lady who brings up her children very carefully, and never allows them to see a newspaper, found them, on going into her nursery the other day, singing: "Lizzie Borden took an ax, and gave her mother twenty whacks; after seeing what she had done, she gave her father twenty-one".
This is the earliest reference I have found to this rhyme. In 120 yrs. we have added 20 whacks! The rhyme seems to have come out shortly after the murders/trial.

so we know the rhyme was well enough known by 1894 in boston. but someone had to have come up with it. my first thought was that the someone was from fall river, but maybe not. it was, after all, a case that had attracted national, even world-wide attention, although i think the rhyme most likely originated in the east coast, if not massachusetts or the surrounding areas of fall river.

according to wikipedia there were a few versions:

Folk rhyme[edit]

The case was memorialized in a popular skipping-rope rhyme sung to the tune of the then-popular song Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay.[58][59]

Lizzie Borden took an ax
And gave her mother forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.

Also

Lizzie Borden took an axe
Gave her mother forty whacks,
Then she hid behind the door,
And gave her father forty more.

Also

Lizzie Borden took an axe
and gave her mother forty whacks,
when the job was finally done
gave her father forty one

Folklore says that the rhyme was made up by an anonymous writer as a tune to sell newspapers. Others attribute it to the ubiquitous, but anonymous, "Mother Goose".[60] In reality, Lizzie's stepmother suffered 18[61] or 19[45] blows; her father suffered 11 blows.

what i recall from my childhood is:

lizzie borden took an axe
gave her mother forty whacks
when she saw what she had done
she gave her father forty-one

it was, as the wikipedia article says, a song sung as one jump-roped, similar to 'ring around the rosie,' and as often cited at the time.

the truth is, i don't recall the first time i heard it, except it was sometime in elementary school, during recess or lunch, from one or more of my schoolmates. it strikes me as strange now, given the events happened about 100 years earlier, and were so gruesome and explicitly portrayed, even in the rhyme (unlike, for instance, 'ring around the rosie').

how and why did this so-called 'nursery rhyme' catch on the way it did, to the point where it was commonly known 100 or so years later? who actually wrote it? someone had to have come up with it, regardless of which version.

i figure if anyone will know, it's someone here :)

even if no one here knows, because it's become folklore for so long, maybe someone will have a little bit of light to shed on it, if not, i'd be interested in how and when people here recall first hearing it.

i don't recall a first time hearing it, myself, except that it had to have been sometime in the 4th grade or earlier. i didn't think anything about it at the time; it was just a song sung while playing jump rope, but the name lizzie borden stuck in my mind because of the rhyme.

so we know it was common enough in 1894, a year after the trial was over, and it's very likely that at some point not long afterwards, lizzie heard it being sung. it's also probable that the kids who sang it knew it some way that they were being "naughty," that their parents probably wouldn't approve if they knew.

do you recall the first time you heard it? i wonder, since it's unlikely kids over the past 10 years or so have played jump rope, if they know much or anything about it. probably some from the ricci tv show and the (terrible) lizzie chronicles show, but do they know anything else?

[twinsrwe]

The first time I heard the Lizzie Borden Ditty/Rhyme/Riddle was when I was a kid, learning to skip rope. My mother told me that she learned to skip rope to the Lizzie Borden Riddle. It was because of this ditty/riddle/rhyme that I became interested in the Borden murders, it is also because of that it I became a true crime buff.

It’s really sad that when I tell people I am a member of the Lizzie Borden Forum, they have no idea who Lizzie Borden is, but as soon as I mention that ditty/riddle/rhyme, they know exactly who I am talking about. It’s unfortunate that Lizzie Borden is still remembered today mostly because of the infamous ditty/riddle/rhyme.

The thing I find interesting about the Lizzie Borden Ditty/Riddle/Rhyme is that there is only one thing in the entire thing that is true - Lizzie’s father was killed.

Lizzie was acquitted, it has never been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that she was the killer.
The weapon was not an ax/axe; it was probably a hatchet.
It was not Lizzie’s mother who was killed, it was her step-mother.
Abby did not receive 40 whacks; she received 19 blows.
It was Lizzie’s father who was killed.
Andrew did not receive 41 whacks, he received 10 blows.

If children have been singing this ditty/riddle/rhyme for the past 123 years, is it any wonder why Lizzie has became memorialized as the actual killer of Andrew and Abby Borden? I think not.

I did some research and found the following article:

According to the book titled, Tender Murderers: Women Who Kill, By Trina Robbins, the ‘Jingle’ was chanted by children before Lizzie’s trial. How true that statement is, I don’t know.

http://tinyurl.com/ptrk89j

I also found two articles, which back up BOBO’s post, although both of the following articles are dated February 4, 1894, where BOBO’s is dated February 15, 1994:

“To Mitigate Hard Times.” Worcester Daily Spy [Worcester, MA] (4 Feb 1894): 9, col 3:

A Boston lady who brings her children up very carefully and never allows them to see a newspaper found them, on going into her nursery the other day, singing:

Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother 20 whacks;
After seeing what she’d done,
She gave her father 21.

Source: http://tinyurl.com/pnde5oy

Indianapolis Journal, 4 February 1894, page 4, column 6, under the heading of ‘ABOUT PEOPLE AND THINGS’:

(Note: This is a tricky web site, as it does not take you directly to the page you want. Once you click on the link, then click on page 4, then click on the + icon located in the upper right hand side, and then scroll over to column 6 or next to the last column, under the heading of ‘ABOUT PEOPLE AND THINGS’.)

A Boston lady who brings her children up very carefully, and never allows them to see a newspaper, found them, on going into her nursery the other day, singing:
“Lizzie Borden took an ax,
And gave her mother twenty whacks;
After seeing what she’d done,
She gave her father twenty-one.”

http://tinyurl.com/on7dcbf

The thing I want to know now, is when did the number of whacks change from 20 and 21 to 40 and 41?

[MysteryReader]

Funny thing is, I had never heard of the ditty until I joined the forum. In addition, I remember hearing about Lizzie Borden years ago in passing but I became hooked once I started looking for crimes I wanted to use in a story I was writing at the time.