The Ladybug Nursery Rhyme

One of the best known of all nursery rhymes is the one that begins "Ladybug ladybug . . . " or, alternatively, "Ladybird ladybird . . . " One common version of this rhyme is:

Ladybug ladybug fly away home,
Your house in on fire and your children are gone,
All except one and that's little Ann,
For she crept under the frying pan.

Another is:

Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home,
Your house is on fire, your children all gone,
Except little Nan, who sits in a pan,
Weaving gold laces as fast as she can.

In Medieval England farmers would set torches to the old hop (used in flavoring beer) vines after the harvest in order to clear the fields for the next planting. This poem was sung as a warning to the ladybugs that were still crawling on the vines in search of aphids. The ladybugs' children (larvae) could get away from the flames, but the pupae, referred to as "Nan" in some versions, were fastened to the plants and thus could not escape.

Pupae are the larvae when they have formed a cocoon and are changing into adults. "Nan" was originally an affectionate form of the name "Ann" (but it is now generally used as a short form of "Nancy").

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