> http://www.snopes.com/language/literary/rosie.htm > > Urban Legend. > > > Garry
Or bad research, but none can be sure of any folk belief as to whether it is legend or has a basis in fact. Not everything was written down. How many childhood games did you play with seemingly meaningless words that weren't written anywhere? Derivations are difficult to prove, or disprove. We must assume that the childhood game (and associated song) London Bridge is falling down must be after the building of London Bridge, and before we learned it. There is a thing called "Murphy's Law", and the wisdom attributes it to a U.S. Air Force officer named Murphy in about 1948. But I first heard of Murphy's Law in about 1944 when reading "Air Age Comics" during the war. The statement of the Law then was "if you design a part so someone can install it wrong, then someone will". And the credited Murphy in the standard etymology wasn't in the Air Force yet (in fact, the U.S. had no Air Force then, it was the Army Air Force or the Naval air service). So we can't know the details of derivation without a consistant chain of evidence - meaning we just guess. Best, Jon
