It's a
Mother Goose nursery rhyme.
Quote:
Oranges and lemons,
Say the bells of St. Clement's.
You owe me five farthings,
Say the bells of St. Martin's.
When will you pay me?
Say the bells of Old Bailey.
When I grow rich,
Say the bells of Shoreditch.
When will that be?
Say the bells of Stepney.
I do not know,
Says the great bell of Bow.
Here comes a candle to light you to bed,
And here comes a chopper to chop off your head!
And yes, to fit the meter, the word 'oranges' has to get squashed into an iamb, ie, two syllables.
Orn-ges comes close, but you can linger a bit on the
orn so that it hints at
or-uhn.
~~
Nursery rhymes are poems that have lingered so long in the nursery that all the extraneous bits have been pared away, leaving only what it takes to catch and hold a toddler's attention. Music and (especially) rhythm are everything to Mother Goose. They're not babytalk, but their target audience can't really speak, either. They're just learning to speak. The words are secondary to holding the kid's attention.
~~
The churches are all in London, and, incidentally, Bow bell (The great bell of Bow) is the traditional determinant of who's a cockney. If you were born within earshot of Bow bells, you qualify. Londoners, I add, can swallow unnecessary syllables with the best of them.
~~
Edited: Whoever laid out the music likely scored the first verse that way so that it has the same number of syllables as the other verses (the last verse has a different rhythm & melody; dunno if its included in the feodog book). It's less confusing that way for beginners. However, in music it's a simple matter to squeeze in an extra syllable by breaking a note into two notes of half the value, so that together they take the same time. A quarter note into two eighths, or an eighth into two sixteenths. If you were singing the song rather than playing it, that's what you could do for the first verse. Since you're playing it instead, try thinking two words while playing one note for both.