Nursery rhyme history

[Pam Patten]

What is the history behind the nursery rhyme, "A tisket, a tasket?"

[artisan]

Does it go: 'A ticket, a tasket, my old man's a basket' ?

[Pam Patten]

The lyric (North American version, anyway) goes: "A tisket, a tasket, a green-and-yellow basket. I wrote a letter to my love and on the way I lost it." I wondered if it had to do with a royal reprieve for a man condemned to hang that went astray, or something along those lines. What lyric do you know? Sometimes, they undergo such dramatric changes over time that the original meaning is quite lost. PJ

[artisan]

In Britain we have "I wrote a letter to my love and on the way I dropped it. One of you has picked it up and put it in your basket. It isn't you. It isn't you. It isn't you. It is you." It's a chasing game.