<P> Alternative versions of the game include: children caught "out" by the last rhyme may stand on a pressure plate behind one of the children forming the original arch, instead of forming additional arches; and, children forming "arches" may bring their hands down for each word of the last line, while the children passing through the arches run as fast as they can to avoid being caught on the last word . It was often the case, in Scottish playgrounds, that children would pair into boy and girl and the ones "caught" would have to kiss . </P> <P> Various theories have been advanced to account for the rhyme, including: that it deals with child sacrifice; that it describes public executions; that it describes Henry VIII's marital difficulties . Problematically for these theories the last two lines, with their different metre, do not appear in the earlier recorded versions of the rhyme, including the first printed in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book (c. 1744), where the lyrics are: </P> <P> Two Sticks and Apple, Ring y Bells at Whitechapple, Old Father Bald Pate, Ring y Bells Aldgate, Maids in White Aprons, Ring y Bells a S Catherines, Oranges and Lemons, Ring y bells at S Clements, When will you pay me, Ring y Bells at y Old Bailey, When I am Rich, Ring y Bells at Fleetditch, When will that be, Ring y Bells at Stepney, When I am Old, Ring y Bells at Pauls . </P> <P> There is considerable variation in the churches and lines attached to them in versions printed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, which makes any overall meaning difficult to establish . The final two lines of the modern version were first collected by James Orchard Halliwell in the 1840s . </P>

Orange and lemons says the bells of st clements