proven false. That one is the story that Blackbeard the pirate created "Sing a Song of Sixpence" with its lyrics as a code to recruit crew for his pirate ship. That tale is actually false and Blackbeard had nothing to do with the song. This story was created in 1999 by the website Snopes (which normally proves or debunks urban legends) part of a series of fabricated urban legends known as "The Repository of Lost Legends" (whose initials read "TROLL") as red herrings to test people's common sense with an outlandish story. All the Lost Legends are fictional and the Lost Legend about "Sing a Song of Sixpence" is no exception. In this deliberate misinterpretation of "Sing a Song of Sixpence" and its lyrics, the "Sixpence" referred to a Sixpence coin (a decent amount of money in Blackbeard's time) and the "pocketful of rye" was a bag ("pocket") with whiskey ("rye", one of the ingredients of whiskey) to drink, that captain Blackbeard gave to each pirate in his crew as a salary everyday..htm The "blackbirds" were pirates that work for Blackbeard and them "Baked in a pie" is the pirates setting up a ruse to raid a nearby ship to capture it. The pie opening and the birds singing refers to the end of the ruse and start of the raid on the nearby ship. The "dainty dish" was the ship that easily captured by the pirates after the raid and the "king" in both instances of the word in the song refer to Blackbeard himself. The lyrics "The king was in his counting house, Counting out his money" was about how Blackbeard was wealthy enough to pay his crew their daily Sixpence and whiskey salary regardless if they captured ships that day or not. The Snopes page claims that this was especially attractive to pirates because as most pirate captains didn't pay salaries and pirate raids were often unsuccessful, it was a common occurrence that pirate ships were forced to return to shore after several months due to lack of funds. The "Queen" mentioned was in fact Blackbeard's ship, called Queen Anne's Revenge and the mention of the queen "Eating bread and honey" is Queen Anne's Revenge taking in supplies at port to prepare for a cruse. The "maid" is a prize ship (a ship specifically chosen to get raided), the "garden" is the Caribbean Sea (where Blackbeard and