Nursery Rhymes

What do you guys think about some of the nursery rhymes out there? I have a few books and often think some of the rhymes are kind of *iffy* in meaning..I've even read a few to some friends and they agree. Some don't really seem appropriate to young kids, as if there is some other meaning behind it..or maybe I'm just reading to much into some of them? There are a few I could give as example, but even that doesn't seem appropriate..so I'll just wait to see what some of you think about some of them.
Magestica

I know the Nursery Rhyme Ring a Ring of Roses was about the Bubonic Plague in London,thats about it...

Most stuff like this sends out a sexual satanic vibe i guess

I know Jack and the bean stalk falsly teaches kids looking up for giants, when they should be looking down.

[Edited on 14-7-2003 by All Seeing Eye]

This is something I find amusing...there are Parents Groups (most seem to be Christian for some reason...go figure)...that seem so passionately focussed on removing books like 'Harry Potter' from libraries...denouncing them as 'evil' and 'inappropriate for children'...

...yet SOOOO many Childrens Nursery Rhymes and Fairy Tales include some pretty unsavoury subject matter.

Jack and the BeanStalk for instance....Jack is little more than a thief, who then kills the Giant who attempts to protect his belongings...so basically he commited Burgulary and Murder...yet is considered a Hero in the book.

Many other Childrens stories feature the 'baddy' being killed in some very brutal ways...sliced open and gutted, pushed into furnaces, landed on by houses...



Peace,
ALIEN

[Edited on 15-7-2003 by alien]

I like the one where jack and jill went up the hill and jill came down with a buck fifty. That is my favorite.

sadly some/many nusery rhymes have been turned into naughty one's, as such:

If you go down to the woods today, your saw of a big suprise
there's uncle Frank whose.....



if you dont know the rest, well have fun guessing!

Jack & Jill went up the hill
to fetch a pail of water
dont know what happened up there
but now they have a daughter

and this list is endless, my son came home a while ago from school, and told me one i hadnt herad in yrs, its amazing how certain one's still keep going around and around!



blackwidow

[Edited on 15-7-2003 by blackwidow666]

Originally posted by alien
This is something I find amusing...there are Parents Groups (most seem to be Christian for some reason...go figure)...that seem so passionately focussed on removing books like 'Harry Potter' from libraries...denouncing them as 'evil' and 'inappropriate for children'...

...yet SOOOO many Childrens Nursery Rhymes and Fairy Tales include some pretty unsavoury subject matter.

Jack and the BeanStalk for instance....Jack is little more than a thief, who then kills the Giant who attempts to protect his belongings...so basically he commited Burgulary and Murder...yet is considered a Hero in the book.

Many other Childrens stories feature the 'baddy' being killed in some very brutal ways...sliced open and gutted, pushed into furnaces, landed on by houses...

I must say that the people complaining about things like harry potter are a bunch of liars and fools. It's ok to learn about witches fattening up little kids and then eating them, and about killing giants and who knows what else, but harry potter is evil. Of course then you get the same groups blaming this piece of crap in new jersey who wanted to kill a bunch of kids on the matrix! Same thing... bottom line is the people today are trying to look for Something ANYTHING to blame their poor parenting skills on. Unfortunately for them, intelligent people see right through it. Don't rate video games, rate parents.

Humpty Dumpty is based on the overthrow of a king in England. He was beheaded(broke to pieces) but unlike the nursery rhyme saying he couldn't be put back together, the king had his head sowed back on for burial.

As said, ring around the rosie is black plague.

But with three little pigs. A monster goes around killing pigs. Or little red riding hood, a monster kills an old granny. These are ok with the christian groups, yet on christian channel(6 here) there is the evils of Harry Potter. What? He goes around saving people from some boogy man guy, what evil about that? Or Hensel and Gretal. Mother and father abandoned children in the woods to collect an insurance claim. They are captured by a cannibal who tries to eat them, but is shoved into the oven and the house is robbed of all the stuff by H&G who go back home.

Yeah, and Stephen King stuff is sick and twisted????

Originally posted by The Real Deal
I know the Nursery Rhyme Ring a Ring of Roses was about the Bubonic Plague in London,thats about it...

Hmm... You beat me to that. "Pocket full of posies" (what they did to the dead), "Ring around the rosy" the discoloration caused by the plague). Of course, "Ashes, ashes, all fall down" self-explanatory. I think its kind of funny kids sing such a sick song.

Korn has a good take on nursary rhymes.
Shoots and Ladders.

My four year old son loves this song, has it on his own CD

S h o o t s & L a d d e r s
Ring-a-round-the-rosies.
Pocket full of posies.
Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

Nursery rhymes are said, verses in my head.
Into my childhood, they're spoonfed.
Hidden violence revealed, darkness that seems real.
Look at the pages that cause all this evil.

One, two - buckle my shoe.
Three, four - shut the door.
Five, Six - pick up sticks.
Seven, Eight - lay them straight

London Bridge is falling down,
falling down, falling down.
London Bridge is falling down my fair lady.

Nursery rhymes are said, verses in my head.
Into my childhood, they're spoonfed.
Hidden violence revealed, darkness that seems real.
Look at the pages that cause all this evil.

Knick-knack paddywhack, give a dog a bone.
This old man came rolling home.

Mary had a little lamb, it's fleece was white as snow.
(Baa Baa Black have you any wool? Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full)

Ring-a-round-the-rosies.
Pocket full of posies.
Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

Nursery rhymes are said, verses in my head.
Into my childhood, they're spoonfed.
Hidden violence revealed, darkness that seems real.
Look at the pages that cause all this evil.

Knick-knack paddywhack, give a dog a bone.

*Theres a big black cloud on the face of the moon,
run away, run away coon
The devils gonna get you and get you soon,
run away run away coon*
(or was I the only one to have ever heard this one and perceived it as a little *dark*?)

I have another one too that I was unfortunately told as a youngster, LOL but I'll keep it to myself as it is a little errr nasty..
Magestica

Mary had a little lamb,
Its balls were made of charcol.
Every time it jumped the fence,
Sparks came out its arsehole.

Sorry, I accidently reported this post when I attempted to reply. My post was that I did not hear that one, Maj. I assume it is outdated because of the coon reference. That reminds me of "Eeny meeny miny mo, catch a n*igger by its toe." Now replaced by "Catch a tiger." No, I am not racist, ask Colonel. You are in the U.S., Maj.?

I'm not in the US, but what's that got to do with it?
However, I AM human
Mag

I always used to find this rather disturbing

Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall,
All the kings horses and all the kings men,
couldn't put Humpty together again.

I'm sure there's more to it, but I cant remember.

I always had little visions of poor Humpty Dumpty with loads of blood and stuff coming out of his head and a few broken bones

[Edited on 16-7-2003 by Pocket]

Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall,
All the kings horses and all the kings men,
Said oh no not scrambled egg again....!!!

Some of them are really disturbing I can't remember the exact words but it was about a little princess who was raped by her evil uncle and when she grew up she slit his throat from ear to ear and set him on fire. I'm not sure what the message was behind that one.

History of nursery rhymes


Everyone grew up with the well-known set of nursery rhymes, such as Jack and Jill, or Peter Peter, Pumpkin Eater, and all the others. The visual imagery invoked by these stories is vivid, such as three blind mice running away from a madwoman with a knife, while Jack made a wild leap over a flaming candle. Best of all for wild imagery, however, would have to be Hey Diddle Diddle.


But these nursery rhymes, most of them, came from historical events or situations. Most of the most popular ones came from British politics, in fact, and were invented as a way of spreading gossip about royalty. And while these rumors and stories have no bearing on our lives anymore, the rhymes they produced have lived on in our lives.


Mind you, a lot of these histories are subject to interpretation. Every rumor about where a story came from is just that, another rumor. You may have heard different stories of where these started, and you may be right.


Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater,

Had a wife and couldn�t keep her,

Put her in a pumpkin shell,

And there he kept her, very well.


My personal favorite. Peter was a poor man who had an unfaithful wife. She kept cheating on him (couldn�t keep her), so he had to find a way to stop her running around. His solution, fairly common in the middle ages, was a chastity belt (pumpkin shell). For those who don�t know, a chastity belt is roughly a pair of metal underwear with lock and key, so that no one could enter the private region of the woman except whoever held the key, usually her husband. And as the rhyme goes, once her put her in that belt, he kept her very well.



Rub-a-dub-dub,

Three men in a tub;

And who do you think they be?

The butcher, the baker,

The candlestick-maker;

Turn 'em out, knaves all three!


I like this one. Why would these three men be sharing a bath? Latent homosexuality, maybe? Not enough water for three individual baths? No, this is a case of not hearing the whole joke, just the punchline. The part of the story we aren�t getting was the setting. A fair side-show, where three young, beautiful women were sitting in a bath-tub, entertaining a mostly male audience, when three of the men jumped up and climbed in with the girls, to be promptly thrown out again by the fair manager. Just three, horny, working folk.


The other version went as follows:-

Hey rub-a-dub,
Ho rub-a-dub,
Three maids in a tub,
And who do you think was there?
The butcher, the baker,
The candlestick maker;
And all of them gone to the fair.


Jack be nimble,

Jack be quick,

Jack jump over,

The candlestick,


This one doesn�t have any intrigue or politics in it, just part of a celebration. A wedding celebration, in fact. During the festivities, a candle was set up, and people took turns trying to jump over the candle. If you extinguished the flame, you were due for a year of bad luck, but if the candle remained lit, a year of good luck was to follow. Of course, another part of wedding celebrations was drinking alcohol, so the people who got really drunk would likely be the people stuck with the bad luck.


As you can see, almost every nursery rhyme has a story behind it. Humpty Dumpty was actually King Richard III, and the famous farmer�s wife from the Three Blind Mice was supposedly Queen Mary I. Baa Baa Black Sheep was about taxation, and The Old Woman Who Lived In a Shoe was referring to the British Empire trying to control its colonies.


Yet children year after year recite these stories, not knowing the original joke or gossip hidden within, not really caring is Jack Sprat was King Charles I. The fake stories that we invent for the rhyme now are much more fun, anyway.

Some more nursary rhymes from my childhood.

All Around The Mulberry Bush
All around the mulberry bush
The monkey chased the weasel.
The monkey thought 'twas all in fun.
Pop! goes the weasel.

A penny for a spool of thread,
A penny for a needle.
That's the way the money goes.
Pop! goes the weasel.

Up and down the City Road,
In and out of the Eagle,
That's the way the money goes.
Pop! goes the weasel.

Half a pound of tuppenny rice,,
Half a pound of treacle,
Mix it up and make it nice,
Pop! goes the weasel.

Ten little Indians

One little, two little, three little Indians
Four little, five little, six little Indians
Seven little, eight little, nine little Indians
Ten little Indian boys.
Ten little, nine little, eight little Indians
Seven little, six little, five little Indians
Four little, three little, two little Indians
One little Indian boy.

I love little pussy, her coat is so warm,
And If I don't hurt her she'll do me no harm.
So I'll not pull her tail, nor drive her away,
But pussy and I very gently will play.

Thank you so much for those and pointing all that out! I was a wee bit embarassed to share some of those, which is rather funny as they are *nursery rhymes* after all?? The last one about the pussy, that is the one I cannot even read my daughter without laughing or blushing. I've sinced made pussy become kitty..I didn't think it appropriate as the way that particular word is used today, and the odd reference in that rhyme
Big THANKS Maddas
Magestica