"[1][2] In the past it has often been attributed to George Steevens (1736–1800), who used it in a pun at the expense of Poet Laureate Henry James Pye (1745–1813) in 1790, but the first verse had already appeared in print in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, published in London around 1744, in the form: Sing a Song of Sixpence, A bag full of Rye, Four and twenty Naughty Boys, Baked in a Pye.

[1] A version of the modern four verses is first extant in Gammer Gurton's Garland or The Nursery Parnassus published in 1784, which ends with a magpie attacking the unfortunate maid.

An Italian cookbook from 1549 (translated into English in 1598) contained such a recipe:[5] "to make pies so that birds may be alive in them and fly out when it is cut up" and this was referred to in a cook book of 1725 by John Nott.

"[7] In their 1951 The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, Iona and Peter Opie write that the rhyme has been tied to a variety of historical events or folklorish symbols such as the queen symbolizing the moon, the king the sun, and the blackbirds the number of hours in a day; or, as the authors indicate, the blackbirds have been seen as an allusion to monks during the period of the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII, with Catherine of Aragon representing the queen, and Anne Boleyn the maid.

[9] The pie opening and the birds singing refers to the end of the ruse and the start of the raid on the nearby ship.

[9] The "dainty dish" was the ship that was easily captured by the pirates after the raid and the "king" in both instances in the song refers to Blackbeard himself.

The mention of another "blackbird" pecking the maid's nose from her face is Blackbeard bragging about his plans to raid the prize ship.

The version of "Sing a Song of Sixpence" on Snopes does not have any verse where the maid's nose is reattached to her face.

: Urban Legends Revealed used this story as a true or false question before a commercial break when it asked "Was the nursery rhyme 'Sing a Song of Sixpence' used as a code to recruit pirates?".

[12] Snopes then posted a page about the mistake on their "Media goofs" section noting that whoever made the show apparently did not see the explanation and had fallen for a story that was fictional.

[12] In later airings of the episode, the answer was corrected to say that the Blackbeard connection was "false" with Snopes' page on Mostly True Stories?