It turns out that many of my students know what Guy Fawkes Day is, which is heartening. They know it, of course, because of the movie V for Vendetta.
The following, if Wikipedia is to be believed, is the earliest recorded Guy Fawkes Day rhyme.
Don't you Remember,
The Fifth of November,
'Twas Gunpowder Treason Day,
I let off my gun,
And made'em all run.
And Stole all their Bonfire away.
British ambivalence about Guy Fawkes is always interesting: in the nineteenth century they burned him in effigy and eagerly read stories in which he was a hero, albeit a flawed one. William Harrison Ainsworth's Guy Fawkes is actually quite good; it takes his actions as wrong but nonetheless regards Fawkes very sympathetically.
