Sister's Choice Quilts

My interests are quilting, reading, cooking, family, decorating, and matters of style. I post regular quilting tutorials and book reviews of current fiction.

Ann Under the Frying Pan

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Isn't this the sweetest little pincushion?  My friend Allyson sent it to me as a little Cheer Up gifty.

Blogging friends are just the greatest, as I have said here many times.  They often have a knack for reading between the lines and saying just the right thing.  Who said that in this age of Internet technology we have lost the art of communication?  Fiddlesticks.

I love my little ladybug and don't know if I can bring myself to stick pins into her!

Ladybug Ladybug, fly away home.

Your house is on fire and your children shall roam.

All except one, and her name is Ann.

She crept under the frying pan.

Does anyone know the derivation of the Ladybug Ladybug nursery rhyme?  As a child, I always found it to be rather grim.  All the ladybug children gone except for one named Ann who crept under a frying pan.  There must be some sort of political meaning behind that.  My parents used to have a cool book called The Annotated Mother Goose, which explained the meanings of common rhymes.  Wonder whatever happened to that book.

One explanation of the rhyme is that since it is very bad luck to kill a ladybug, reciting the rhyme would cause the little bug to fly off unharmed.

My mom used to say in jest that the bite of a ladybug was deadly poison.  When asked why no one ever got bitten by a lady bug, she would say the reason was that they had marvelous kind dispositions.

As you can probably tell, I haven't been doing much lately except blowing my nose and laying around.  Hope to change that today, with more interesting posts to come later this week!

26 responses to “Ann Under the Frying Pan”

  7. I like your rhyme better. Growing up I learned it as “Ladybug, Ladybug, fly away home, your house is on fire & your children will burn”.

  8. I like your rhyme better. Growing up I learned it as “Ladybug, Ladybug, fly away home, your house is on fire & your children will burn”.

  13. here’s some info:
    Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home,
    Your house is on fire, your children all gone,Except little Nan, who sits in a pan,
    Weaving gold laces as fast as she can.
    In Medieval England farmers would set torches to the old hop (used in flavoring beer) vines after the harvest in order to clear the fields for the next planting. This poem was sung as a warning to the ladybugs that were still crawling on the vines in search of aphids. The ladybugs’ children (larvae) could get away from the flames, but the pupae, referred to as “Nan” in some versions, were fastened to the plants and thus could not escape.
    Pupae are the larvae when they have formed a cocoon and are changing into adults. “Nan” was originally an affectionate form of the name “Ann” (but it is now generally used as a short form of “Nancy”).
    Domestic lady bugs don’t bite, but their Asian sisters, who look almost identical, have spurs on their legs that can cause an irritation.
    And now you know…

  14. here’s some info:
    Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home,
    Your house is on fire, your children all gone,Except little Nan, who sits in a pan,
    Weaving gold laces as fast as she can.
    In Medieval England farmers would set torches to the old hop (used in flavoring beer) vines after the harvest in order to clear the fields for the next planting. This poem was sung as a warning to the ladybugs that were still crawling on the vines in search of aphids. The ladybugs’ children (larvae) could get away from the flames, but the pupae, referred to as “Nan” in some versions, were fastened to the plants and thus could not escape.
    Pupae are the larvae when they have formed a cocoon and are changing into adults. “Nan” was originally an affectionate form of the name “Ann” (but it is now generally used as a short form of “Nancy”).
    Domestic lady bugs don’t bite, but their Asian sisters, who look almost identical, have spurs on their legs that can cause an irritation.
    And now you know…

  19. Hope the nose blowing slows down soon. My poor schnoz is all sore and chapped from all the nose blowing. And I even got the good tissues with aloe!
    I learned the same version of the rhyme as Sheri using “your children will burn.” I always figured it had something to do with politics in old England but the info SuzK gave sounds very plausable. You learn so much reading quilt blogs!

  20. Hope the nose blowing slows down soon. My poor schnoz is all sore and chapped from all the nose blowing. And I even got the good tissues with aloe!
    I learned the same version of the rhyme as Sheri using “your children will burn.” I always figured it had something to do with politics in old England but the info SuzK gave sounds very plausable. You learn so much reading quilt blogs!

  25. Wow, SuzK’s explanation is great! I recently heard about a book that explains Nursery Rhymes:
    Pop Goes the Weasel: The Secret Meanings of Nursery Rhymes
    by Albert Jack
    I haven’t read it, but it might have some interesting stories!
    -Holly

  26. Wow, SuzK’s explanation is great! I recently heard about a book that explains Nursery Rhymes:
    Pop Goes the Weasel: The Secret Meanings of Nursery Rhymes
    by Albert Jack
    I haven’t read it, but it might have some interesting stories!
    -Holly