The Farmer in the Dell
               or
The Cheese Stands Alone

Why does "the cheese stand alone"? Remember the "Farmer in the Dell" song? It ends with the line "the cheese stands alone". I’ve always wondered about the cheese. Why does it stand alone?

Suggested Answers:

Perhaps it's really good quality cheese and needs no accompaniment. Or perhaps it just stands alone...waiting for the right wine to come along.

We also have to consider that the cheese may have been moved there.
The question is ... WHO moved it?

1) Because that's just its whey.

2) Because "The Farmer in the Dell" is not just a song but a dance. At the beginning, one child, the "farmer," stands in the center of a circle, and the other children sing and dance around him/her. On the first verse, s/he chooses a spouse, and that child leaves the circle to join the farmer at the center. The spouse takes a child on the next verse; on the next the child picks a nurse; shortly after that it's a barnyard menagerie that lasts long enough to pack the rest of the kids into the center, with the proviso that the last four characters "taken" are the dog, cat, rat, and cheese. The cheese, having no one left to "take," stands alone, and gets to be the farmer on the next go-round. Would that then make him or her the Big Cheese?

Because it sits... And waits... And... Plans.
Soon, my pretties, soon... You will behold the TRUE power of cheese!

Even Venezuelan Beaver Cheese enjoys solitude now and then.

Are we assuming that it's a problem for the cheese to stand alone? Perhaps the cheese prefers to be unpartnered.

Maybe the cheese wasn't a gouda dancer.

Because while it pretended to be nice, it was really a predatory muenster.

The others are apostates, and do not believe in cheeses.

When we sing it here at home, my little girls stand and raise a fist for the last verse--it's some sort of Cheese Power thing.