Songs & Places: Banbury Cross

"Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross" is an English language nursery rhyme (= old song or poem for children) connected with the English town Banbury. Banbury is a market town located on the River Cherwell in northern Oxfordshire, England. It had a population of 43,867 at the 2001 census, though this figure has increased greatly in recent years. Banbury is part of the Cherwell district. A cock horse (in American English, hobby horse) is a stick with a model horse' s head fastened to the top, which children pretend to ride. The word cock horse is a famous one because the song begins:
Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross,
To see a fine lady upon a white horse;
Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,
And she shall have music wherever she goes.
There has been considerable speculation about the meaning of the rhyme. It has been argued that the bells worn on the lady's toes refer to the fashion of wearing bells on the end of shoes in the fifteenth century. The main Banbury Cross was taken down around 1600, but other crosses were present in the town and, as is often the case, the place may have retained the name, so it is difficult to argue for the antiquity of the rhyme from this fact. The fine lady has been associated with Queen Elizabeth I, Lady Godiva, and Celia Fiennes. The nursery rhyme was very popular before the twentieth century, it was sung every day by William Gladstone to his children as they had "rides on his foot, slung over his knee".
The town of Banbury is famed for its Banbury cakes – similar to Eccles cakes but oval in shape – and for its annual Banbury Hobby Horse Festival.