My wife went out to a shower today. I’m still not even sure if it was a baby shower or a wedding shower. I don’t really ask a lot of questions. All I know is she got dressed up and left me home with the five kids.
It was raining so me, being Super Dad, picked out a large book of nursery rhymes from our bookshelf to read to the four year old. I asked my six year old son if he wanted to listen and he looked at me like I had three or maybe four heads that were each speaking Portuguese in Pig Latin.
OK. I’ll take that as a no. I’m perceptive like that.
I started with Humpty Dumpty, the epic tale of an unfortunate egg. My eight year old daughter, sitting nearby, interrupted by asking “What’s the deal with Humpty Dumpty?”
She asked why, if you were an egg, would you sit on a wall in the first place. Doesn’t that seem like a silly thing for an egg to do? My nine year old daughter added that she wouldn’t sit on a wall and she was human which is a lot more difficult to break than an egg.
The eight year old wondered who puts horses in charge of putting eggs back together anyway. No wonder they couldn’t put him together.
So with my eight and nine year olds in tow I announced that we would look it up on the internet.
August 15, 2011 at 4:45 am
I've heard that fairy tales are pretty nasty too. The Little Mermaid, Snow White- Disney makes it all sunshine and rainbows, but that actual stories are pretty horrific. So I've heard…
August 15, 2011 at 5:54 am
Sounds like Mother Goose was quite the Protestant…
The Little Mermaid isn't exactly horrific, but it's definitely much deeper, darker, and better than the Disney version. Now, the original Rapunzel isn't quite kid-friendly…
August 15, 2011 at 9:17 am
Since the Register won't let me post a comment, I thought I would let you know here: there are many explanations for the Mother Goose Rhymes, many of which are guesses. Some are actual historical explanations, but others are urban legends.
"Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary" may be about Protestant persecution, or about making fun of the fact that Mary Tudor could not produce an heir. It is also said to be about her cousin, Mary Stuart, known as Mary Queen of Scots and the fact that she only married her husband to appease her Protestant subjects. It's also said to be about her bedroom, which is perfectly described in the rhyme. It views her garden, has silver doorhandles in the shape of bells, has shells around the doorway, and portraits of her maids line her wall. The rhyme could also be about the Catholic Church, with the silver bells being the Cathedral bells, the cockleshells being the pendants worn by the pilgrims to St. James' Shrine in Spain, and the pretty maids being the nuns.
"Jack and Jill" is either about a couple from Kilmersdon, Somerset, from whom the name Gilson (Jill's son) comes from, or about Charles I trying to tax liquids, leading to watered down ale, and his beheading.
"Ring a Ring o' Roses" cannot be about the plague. The earliest documentation (in English) is from 1881, and variant which is believed to have come from 1790. Similar rhymes were recorded in Germany in 1796 and Italy in 1874. The plague interpretation of "Ring a Ring o' Roses" didn't appear until 1961, in the book "The Plague and the Fire" by James Leasor. Europeans did not cremate victims of the plague, as they knew nothing about germs or sanitizing. They thought it spread via the smell of the dead. In fact, there were no crematories in England or in most of Europe after Constantine until the mid 19th century, as cremation was believed to be a pagan practice. No one knows the actual story behind the rhyme. Some say that it may be referring to the Protestant outlawing of dancing, and the secret "play parties" that people had to circumvent the law. Others say it refers to hiding from the French and Swedish armies during the 100 Years' War. Older variants of the rhyme say "hush" or "scurry" instead of "ashes" or "atishoo".
"Georgie Porgie" was originally "Rowley Powley" (pronounced "roly poly"). According to the Oxford English Dictionary, rowley powley refers to a rascal, a short, round child, or "A kind of pudding, consisting of a sheet of pastry covered with jam or preserves, formed into a roll and boiled or steamed," (hence the "pudding and pie" part). Therefore, it's believed to be a play on several meanings of the phrase. The first recorded version of the rhyme is, "Rowley Powley, pudding and pie/Kissed the girls and made them cry/When the girls began to cry/Rowley Powley runs away." It probably became Georgie Porgie when Prince Regent George IV was mocked in a political cartoon for running from illegal bare-knuckle boxing matches when a boxer looked about to die.
August 15, 2011 at 10:07 am
Maggie, The Little Mermaid IS a horrific story. Her tongue is ripped out, her fin is split in two, and the prince marries the other woman, which means that the Little Mermaid is a bubble of foam on the sea for all eternity. Oh, wait, she does get to go to heaven after 300 years, with one year less for each day she finds a good child, except for the fact that a year is added for each tear cried when finding a naughty child.
Sleeping Beauty was raped and gave birth in her sleep. Snow White isn't so bad, until you realize that the prince was a necrophile, as he actually thought she was dead, and it was dragging her coffin over a tree root that caused the apple to dislodge in her throat. Belle was effectively kidnapped for asking for a simple rose, while her sisters asked for lavish gifts. The genie in Aladdin was not friendly, in fact, a djinn is an Islamic demon. Cinderella's sisters cut off their toes and heels to fit in the slipper, and they and their mother had their eyes gouged out by the birds at the end. In all of the stories that have evil step-mothers, those were actually the characters' real mothers. The Grimm brothers didn't want to harm the family unit, so they changed all of the evil mothers in the stories to evil step-mothers. So, yes, Cinderella's "step-mother" and "step-sisters" were originally her actual mother and sisters.
August 15, 2011 at 2:35 pm
All the classic horror stories (and movies) are based on the themes found in the fairy stories. Compare "The Phantom Of The Opera" with "The Beauty And The Beast". Both stories have a hideous monster who holds a girl captive, and both are redeemed by the love of the girl. Scotju
August 15, 2011 at 3:38 pm
I had heard about all of those except the "Lady Bug" one when I was a teen in high school taking a Children's Lit class. Morbid, but fascinating at the same time.
August 15, 2011 at 7:42 pm
Not quite a nursery rhyme, but the Hokie Pokie is also bad. It is mocking the priest's actions at Mass; the words Hokie Pokie mocking the Latin words of consecration (in a similar way as Hocus Pocus)and the movements mocking the ritual actions of the priest.
August 16, 2011 at 1:52 am
It is time to start writing nursery rhymes for our times. Mother Goose by the way was a real person who was married to Jacob Goose a physician. I believe her name was Sarah (or Mary) Goose and she is buried in Boston Massachusetts. I have seen a gravestone pencil etching of her tombstone.
August 16, 2011 at 2:52 am
Nursery Rhymes make contact with the Unconscious, and there are no shades of gray in the Unconscious. All girls want to marry a good prince; and all boys want to BE that prince. Nursery Rhymes help one deal with those symbols, Liberals od not like them, because they want to be in control, even of the Unconscious. They aren't.