The nursery rhyme that inspired The Queen Was in the Parlour is listed as what number in the Roud Folk Song Index?
The Queen Was in the Parlour The Queen Was in the Parlour: a romance in three acts is a play by the English writer Noël Coward. Belonging to the Ruritanian romance genre, its title is drawn from a line in the nursery rhyme "Sing a Song of Sixpence". Although written in 1922, it was not produced until 24 August 1926, when it was premiered at the St Martin's Theatre.
Parlour music Parlour music is a type of popular music which, as the name suggests, is intended to be performed in the parlours of middle-class homes by amateur singers and pianists. Disseminated as sheet music, its heyday came in the 19th century, as a result of a steady increase in the number of households with enough surplus cash to purchase musical instruments and instruction in music, and with the leisure time and cultural motivation to engage in recreational music-making. Its popularity waned in the 20th century as the phonograph record and radio replaced sheet music as the most common method of dissemination of popular music. This is the middlebrow and lowbrow music from which European classical music began to gradually and eventually self-consciously distance itself beginning around 1790. (1989, p. 4, 17-18, 321)