Hot Codlins Lyrics
A little woman, neither young nor old, earns her living by selling hot codlins in the street, calling "hot, hot, hot!" to everyone who passes.
Hot Codlins
There was a little woman, as I've been told,
Who was not very young, nor yet very old;
Now this little woman her living got
By selling codlins, hot, hot, hot!
Printed from https://nurseryrhymes.co/hot-codlins/
- Type
- Mother Goose
- Tune
- Spoken or sung
- Best for ages
- 3 to 8 years
What Does Hot Codlins Mean?
A codlin (or codling) is an old kind of cooking apple, long and green. Street sellers in London used to bake or roast them and sell them hot, the way people sell roasted chestnuts today. "Hot, hot, hot!" is her street cry, the call sellers used to let everyone know what they had.
History and Origin
This short version comes from The Real Mother Goose (1916). Hot Codlins was also a comic song made famous by the clown Joseph Grimaldi in London in the early 1800s, and lines from it passed into nursery rhyme books.
Learning Activities
- Street cries: invent your own seller's call for something you like to eat, and shout it like the codlin woman.
- Baked apples: with a grown-up, bake an apple with a little cinnamon and taste a hot codlin.
- Old and young: she is "not very young, nor yet very old". Talk about what middle age means.