This is one of those things I should know… but I don’t, at least not definitively.
The lullaby “Rock A-Bye Baby,” is supposed to sooth babies off to sleep. But its lyrics are anything but soothing. When the wind blows, the cradle will rock? And at the end, of course, the poor baby, cradle and all, come crashing out of the tree.
From whence came this bizarre psychological torture?
'Twas that twisted old crone, Mother Goose.
Elmer J. Fudd,
Millionaire.
I own a mansion and a yacht.
Many of our beloved nursery rhymes have words which paint quite gruesome images. Many were used to mock the lords or King or Queen of England, etc. indirectly since there was no “freedom of speech”.
I once met a librarian who has done quite extensive research on this subject. As for the “rocking cradle”, I don’t know the exact intent. Perhaps it hints at a revolt?
King, king! The peasants are revolting!
They certainly are! (G. Marx?)
Falling out of the tree? That’s NUTHIN. Check this out:
What’ll we do with the baby?
What’ll we do with the baby-O?
Send him off to his Mammy,
That’s what we’ll do with the baby-O.
Every time the baby cries
Stick our fingers in the baby’s eyes.
That’s what we’ll do with the baby,
That’s what we’ll do with the baby-O.
When the baby starts to grin
Give the baby a bottle of gin.
That’s what we’ll do with the baby,
That’s what we’ll do with the baby-O.
– Old Appalachian folk lullaby
Uke
I, too found the nursery rhyme troubling and never sang it to my kids.
I did learn that the “ashes, ashes, all fall down” part of “London Bridge,” along with the posies in the pockets, was a reference to the plague. And, that those three blind rodents were bishops of the Anglican church who were beheaded by Queen Mary (the contrary one with the garden) who was also know as “the farmer’s wife.”
renee
Brooklyn
With all due respect, the “plague/rosie” connection is apocryphal.
Ike, you haven’t been using the Appalachian Baby Guide on little Banjo and Pianola, have you?
Aaaaarrggghhhh! It’s the alzheimer’s. Now I remember that what I remembered was never proven.
Mea culpa Mjollnir,
renee
It doesn’t matter what you actually sing to an infant, as long as it’s nice and soothing.
Try it sometime! Go up to a little kid and say, in a sing-songy way, all smiley and happy, something like:
“You’re a rotton baby, yes you are! I’m going to feed you do a clan of wild bears, yes I am! Ooh, wouldn’t that be nice?”
Yer pal,
Satan
Another pretty bad one is Ring-Around-The-Rosy. It came out when people were dying from either the plague or smallpox it means:
Ring around the rosy (kids would notice one of their classmates was flushed, sign of fever and forma circle around them)
Pocket full of posy (people used to put flowers in thier pockets to hide the smell of the infection on their skin)
Husha-Husha (sound of sneezing/struggling for breath)
We all fall down (you’re dead)
pretty cheery,no?
Does the noise in my head bother you?
Satan’s right…my daughter’s favorite baby-time songs were “Ain’t Misbehaving,” “Night and Day,” and “Moritat” from the THREEPENNY OPERA.
My son’s were “We’ve Got Franklin D. Roosevelt Back Again,” “How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?” and “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”
And they BOTH loved the Grateful Dead’s “Brokedown Palace,” one of the great lullabies of our time.
Uke
Oooh, Ike, I wish you’d been MY Daddy.
Mine played me Tommy Maken and the Weavers, which was pretty cool, but I never got “We’ve Got Franklin D. Roosevelt Back Again!”
Poysyn, apparently you didn’t read the post by Mjollnir. For those of you interested in this sort of thing, I think that most of the legends about these nursery rimes are discussed quite thoroughly at the urbanlegends web site.