Which nursery rhyme is referenced by the title and plot of A Pocket Full of Rye?

The nursery rhyme referenced by the title and plot of *A Pocket Full of Rye* is “Sing a Song of Sixpence.”

The novel’s title echoes the rhyme’s opening: “A pocket full of rye.” Christie uses the rhyme as a pattern for a sequence of murders. Rex Fortescue, a wealthy businessman, dies while drinking tea, and rye is later found in his pocket. Other details in the household parallel further lines and images from the rhyme, turning a familiar children’s verse into a sinister clue.

Christie published the novel in 1953 as a Miss Marple mystery. The case combines a country-house setting, inheritance tensions, poison, and staged symbolism. Miss Marple recognizes that the killer is imitating the rhyme rather than merely leaving random eccentric clues.

The rhyme itself is English and is generally associated with the eighteenth century, although its precise origin is uncertain. Its best-known version includes four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie, a king, a queen, and a maid. The sixpence was an old British coin, not a fictional monetary unit invented for the novel.