When we put our children to bed at night and tell them fairy tales and nursery rhymes, we intend for them to fall asleep peacefully and have pleasant dreams. But how pleasant can their dreams be when their sleepy little heads are filled not with visions of sugar plums but with fear, violence and death?
Their little heads are destined to be filled with the same images as ours: blind mice running but unable to avoid having their tails amputated with a carving knife; a guy who kisses girls and makes them cry; an old woman who lives in a shoe and whips her hungry children for no reason; babies rocking in cradles and falling when branches break; Solomon Grundy, born on Monday, dies at the end of the week; Piper’s son Tom steals pigs; scary spiders scare girls in tuffets; Humpty Dumpty falls off a wall and can never be fixed; and monkeys that hunt weasels and bust them. How did this carnage start?
Some of these tales have been around for a long time, and generally date back to the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries as one of England’s most enduring forms of oral culture. Apparently, most children’s songs were originally composed for the entertainment of adults, originating as ballads and folk songs.
The earliest published collection of nursery rhymes was Tommy Thumb’s (Pretty) Song Book (London, 1744). It included “Little Tom Tucker”, “Sing a Song of Sixpence” and “Who Killed Cock Robin?” The most influential was “Mother Goose’s Melody: Sonnets for the Cradle,” published by John Newberry in 1781. Among its 51 rhymes were “Jack and Jill,” “Ding Dong Bell,” and “Hush-a-bye baby on the tree.” . top.”
Hush-a-bye Baby, in the treetop,
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock.
When the bug breaks, the cradle will fall,
And the baby will come down, with crib and everything.
According to “The Origin of Nursery Rhymes & Mother Goose” (1997) by Vikki Harris, regardless of their dirty words, nursery rhymes that were popular years ago, and still are today, can be classified into three categories. First there are the lullabies, the songs and melodies that most of us are familiar with. These were far from soothing, but are said to have been sung to intimidate the child and/or used as an outlet for the emotions of the parent or nurse:
Goodbye, bunting baby,
Dad has gone hunting
Gone to get a rabbit skin
To wrap the baby pennants.
-1784
Goodbye, townie
Where is Tony Lumpkin?
My lady is on her deathbed,
By eating half a pumpkin.
-1842
A second reason for the development of nursery rhymes was for children’s entertainment. Counting rhymes and alphabet rhymes fit into this category and are generally non-violent.
One Two Three Four Five,
I once caught a live fish,
Six seven eight nine ten,
So I let him go again.
-1888
Here are A, B, C, D, E, F and G,
H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V,
W, X, Y and Z-
And oh dear me,
When will I learn?
My A, B, C?
1869
Tickling games were easily used for the amusement of infants and toddlers. Perhaps the two best known are:
Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker,
Make me a cake as fast as you can;
Pat it and prod it, and mark it with B,
And put it in the oven for baby and me
-1698
This little pig went to the market,
This little pig stayed at home,
This little pig had roast beef,
This little pig had none,
And this little pig was crying,
wee, wee, wee
All the way home.
-1728
“It is also possible that the credit for preservation must go to the nursery itself,” explains Henry Bett in “Nursery Rhymes and Tales – Their Origin and History (1968).” amazing persistence of popular tradition, reinforced by the characteristic conservatism of childhood that insists that rhymes are always repeated in the same way”.
In the circular game Ring-around-the-rosie, links have been made to the Great Plague of London and Edinburgh. The lines “Ashes! Ashes! We all fall down” or “Hush! Hush! Hush! Hush! We all have collapsed” refers to the death of people.
Ring-a-round a rosie,
A pocket full of poetry,
Mortal ashes! Mortal ashes!
We all fall.
*******
three blind mice
three blind mice,
Look how they run!
They all ran after a farmer’s wife,
Who cut off their tails with a carving knife.
Have you ever seen something like this in your life,
Like three blind mice?
************
All around the mulberry bush
The monkey chased the weasel.
The monkey thought it was all fun.
Pop music! the weasel goes.
****************
Georgie Porgie, pudding and cake,
He kissed the girls and made them cry.
When the children went out to play,
Georgie Porgie ran away.
(This rhyme refers to the loving and amoral Prince Regent who became George IV during the Regency era in England)
********
jack and jill
I went up the hill
To bring a bucket of water.
cat fell
And broke his crown
And Jill came tumbling after.
******
Little Miss Muffet, sitting on a tuffet,
eating its curds and whey;
A spider came
who sat next to him
And it scared Miss Muffet.
If you carefully reread Hansel and Gretel, you may never repeat it to your children again:
Near a large forest lived a poor woodcutter with his wife
and their two children. The boy was called Hansel and the
Gretel girl. She had little to bite and break, and once when
a great scarcity fell on the earth, he could no longer procure even his daily bread. Now when he thought of this at night in his bed, and shook in his anxiety, he groaned and said to his wife, what shall she become of us? How are we going to feed our poor children, when we no longer have anything even for ourselves? I’ll tell you one thing, husband, answered the woman, early tomorrow morning
will take the children to the forest where the
thicker
There we will light a fire for them and give each of them
we’ll give them one more piece of bread, and then we’ll go to our work and
leave them alone. They will never find their way home again, and we
will get rid of them. No, wife, said the man, I will not do that.
How can I bear to leave my children alone in the woods? Wild animals would soon come and rip them apart. Oh fool, she said, then the four of us must starve, you can also plan the plans for our coffins, and she didn’t leave him alone until he consented. But I’m so sorry for the poor kids, anyway, said the man.
The two children had not been able to sleep either because of hunger, and
he had heard what his stepmother had told his father. Gretel
he cried bitter tears and said to Hansel, now it’s all over for us.
*********
In “The Truth Behind Goldilocks”, Mental Floss – Volume 2, Richard Zachs writes that we are reading watered-down versions of the fairy tales and that the originals were much more graphic and brutal.
In the first known version (1831) of Goldilocks, discovered in Toronto, the author, one Eleanor Mure, a 32-year-old maiden aunt, created “The Story of the Three Bears” for her nephew, Horace Broke.
The original “Goldilocks” was an “angry old lady” who breaks into the bears’ house because they snubbed her during a recent social call. Once the three bears catch the old lady, they try to figure out what to do with her. This is what they came up with:
They throw it into the fire, but they couldn’t burn it;
In the water they put her, but she would not drown there;
They seize it before all the astonished People,
And throw it high in the steeple of St. Paul’s Cemetery;
And if she’s still there, when you look seriously,
You will see it very clearly, my dear Little Horbook!
No other version has Goldilocks impaled on a church steeple. The gray-haired old woman did not become a golden-haired girl until 1918.
The tales we remember so fondly from our childhoods will be passed down to our children and spawn another generation of childhood traditions.
Who killed Cock Robin? I did mom. It was fun.
