The full Lizzie Borden skipping rope rhyme and its eerie origin, after Netflix’s Monster

Thanks to Netflix’s Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, lots of people are only just finding out about a gruesome nursery rhyme that tells the story of her father and stepmother’s murders. 

The rhyme is about American woman Lizzie Borden, who was accused of killing her father and stepmother in August 1892 at their home in Fall River, Massachusetts. Borden was acquitted of the murders, but that didn’t stop people from gossiping – including children.  

Here’s a look at where the rhyme actually originated and its eerie history. 

Credit: Netflix

The full rhyme about Lizzie Borden goes like this

“Lizzie Borden took an axe,
And gave her mother forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.”

“Andrew Borden now is dead,
Lizzie hit him on the head.
Up in heaven he will sing,
on the gallows she will swing.”

The Lizzie Borden rhyme has an eerie history

The rhyme eerily originated amongst local Fall River children, who sang it immediately after the murders. Some are believed to have taunted Borden with the rhyme, as seen in Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story when the kids knock on the door at the end while dressed as her. Apparently, they would sing it outside the window of her Maplecroft estate. 

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It was then printed in an Ohio newspaper, The News-Herald, on 15th February, 1894, alongside an article about a concerned Boston mother who heard children singing it at school. This was just eight months after Lizzie was acquitted of the killings in June 1893. 

The version that was printed was actually a bit different to the rhyme we know today, using the numbers “twenty whacks” and “twenty one” instead of “forty whacks” and “forty one”. It also used the old spelling of axe. 

Credit: Netflix

“Lizzie Borden took an ax
And gave her mother twenty whacks; 
After seeing what she’d done, 
She gave her father twenty-one.”

Over the years, the rhyme kept being said amongst children and began being used as a skipping rope rhyme, jumping as you say the words. As it got passed down, “twenty” turned into “forty,” likely to make it seem even more gruesome. However, the original version was actually far more accurate to the real Borden crime scene. 

The next official recording of the rhyme was in Edmund Pearson’s 1924 book, Studies in Murder. He claimed the poem had become very famous, but nobody knew who invented it. 134 years later, we’ll never know who came up with it, but it will be ingrained in American school culture forever. 

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