Sing a Song of Sixpence

“Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full of rye
Four and twenty blackbirds
Baked in a pie” 

Artist Joseph McDonnell’s sculpture sits behind the Senior Center on 5353 Sunol Blvd, Pleasanton in a sunlight garden area.  Yet, the mysterious meaning of the children’s rhyme is shrouded in uncertainty.  What is known is ‘sixpence’. The British” old money” system began in 1066 AD.  The British used three currency units: pounds, shillings, and pence (or pennies). A sixpence coin was worth six pennies, or sixpence. In 1971 The British adopted a new money system and the sixpence fell into obscurity.

Artist McDonnell told his tale using the modern version of the ditty.  Note the tray is filled with blackbirds replacing the phrase “naughty boys” published in London, in 1744.  Still curious are theories related to the famous pirate Blackbeard who gave his thieving sailors a guaranteed daily pay of sixpence and the opportunity to split the booty. Could it be the four and twenty blackbirds might be the 24 sailors needed to man a pirate ship?  Perhaps “Baked in a pie” is about the 16th-century amusement of placing live birds in a pie and the surprise of them flying out when it is cut.  (Please note the knife in hand and the head titled back in awe). Or perhaps it refers to the trickery of the pirates to hide in a seemingly abandoned ship and spring into action after the sailors board, overwhelming the unsuspecting crew.

As curious as the many interpretations of the nursery rhyme are the wanderings of the sculpture to its final location.  First commissioned for the Sun Valley Mall, then given to Stoneridge Mall, and eventually gifted by the Pleasanton Cultural Arts Council to the City of Pleasanton, the sculpture was eventually installed in 1981.

Jan Coleman-Knight