Remember, remember!
The fifth of November,
The Gunpowder treason and plot;
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!
Guy Fawkes and his companions
Did the scheme contrive,
To blow the King and Parliament
All up alive.
Threescore barrels, laid below,
To prove old England's overthrow.
But, by God's providence, him they catch,
With a dark lantern, lighting a match!
A stick and a stake
For King James's sake!
If you won't give me one,
I'll take two,
The better for me,
And the worse for you.
A rope, a rope, to hang the Pope,
A penn'orth of cheese to choke him,
A pint of beer to wash it down,
And a jolly good fire to burn him.
Holloa, boys! holloa, boys! make the bells ring!
Holloa, boys! holloa boys! God save the King!
Hip, hip, hooor-r-r-ray!
It's the 5th of November, also known as Guy Fawkes' Day. This commemorates November 5, 1605 when Guy Fawkes, a conspirator in the Gunpowder Plot, was arrested. The Gunpowder Plot was a plan to blow up the British House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament on November 5th, thereby assassinating the Protestant King James I and kicking off a revolt which would end with a Catholic monarch being placed on the throne. Unfortunately for them, an anonymous letter warning of the plot was sent to Baron Monteagle who then showed it to the king. James I ordered a search of the Parliament buildings and Guy Fawkes was found in the cellars with many barrels of gunpowder and no creditable excuse for being there. Not that he really wanted one; when asked what his intentions were, Fawkes answered, "to blow you Scotch beggars back to your native mountains." Can't really be plainer than that. Oh- James I of England was also James VI of Scotland, to explain the "Scotch" thing.
Fawkes was taken to the Tower of London for "questioning" (aka torture) and after a couple of days, he gave up the names of his fellow conspirators. They were all tried and sentenced to death by being hanged, drawn, and quartered. Which seems like literal overkill. Fawkes managed to escape the worst of this; while climbing the scaffold he either jumped or fell off, breaking his neck and dying. The execution was continued anyway: they proceeded to hang, decapitate and dismember him, though it must have been a little anticlimactic at that point.
The above poem has been around in various forms for a very long time... no idea who the original rhymester might be. The final verse- about hanging and burning up the pope- is often left out these days, for obvious reasons.