friend's blogs & Lagu tiga Sixpence

slowly digging through friend's blog, food and travel~
South East Asia/Malaysian
http://mamamuezza.blogspot.com/
recipes

http://maorichika.blogspot.com/
travel

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btw 2 days ago, i was playing a folk Malay song/nursery rhymes on a guitar 'Lagu tiga kupang' then my friend noticed the lyrics and told me isn't that an old nursery rhymes that she knew before, googled and found its an old English nursery rhymes Sing a Song of Sixpence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sing_a_Song_of_Sixpence
Lyrically similar and connected...the question is i thought it was brought by the Brits to Malaya during 1700 but a little more digging/googling, its more about Black beard's recruiting pirates....more below



The surprising truth is that this innocent little rhyme, which dates from the early 1700s, actually represents a coded message used to recruit crew members for pirate vessels!

Pirates (or corsairs, privateers whose activities were sanctioned by letters of marque from a sovereign) did not spend all their time at sea: they cruised the waters in areas such as the Mediterranean, the Spanish Main, or the Atlantic coast of North America, looking for prizes, and they returned to port when the need for supplies or repairs demanded it. Upon reaching port, the ship’s captain paid off the crew (primarily by dividing the spoils of whatever they had captured), and the crew members then dispersed ashore (usually to spend all their pay on alcohol and prostitutes as quickly as possible). Some crewmen tended to stay in the vicinity, but others left for other regions, caught on with other ships, died, were killed, or simply disappeared. Thus, much like the captains of naval vessels and merchant traders, the captains of pirate ships needed to recruit new crew members whenever they embarked on yet another venture. Since piracy (as opposed to privateering) was against the law, pirates devised codes that could be used to advertise for crew members without openly revealing their illegal affiliations.

The nursery rhyme “Six a Song of Sixpence” was a coded message that evolved over several years’ times and was used by confederates of the notorious pirate Blackbeard to recruit crew members for his prize-hunting expeditions. Like many other messages passed down to us over hundreds of years by oral tradition, there is no one “official” version, nor is there a “correct” interpretation for any particular variant. In general, however, the most common form of this rhyme bore these veiled meanings:

Related news:
On another note, i blogged something about 'Pantun' or old Malay folks of rhyming that were translated into English by French poets in 19th century previously...
"When French poets rediscovered the form in the nineteenth century, they were drawn to the pantun berkait- a pantun form made up of interlocking verses."
http://shiekoreto1.blogspot.fi/2014/07/mcsweeneys-pantunpantoum.html