Here’s something I found recently in an old book of nursery rhymes:
There was a jolly miller
Lived by the River Dee
He worked and sang from dawn ‘til night
No lark so blythe as he!
And this the burden of his song
Forever used to be:
"I care for nobody, no, not I,
“Since nobody cares for me!”
Seems an innocent bit of fluff until you read it twice. Is this dude “jolly” or sociopathic?
Solomon Grundy
Born on Monday
Christened on Tuesday
Married on Wednesday
Took ill Thursday
Grew worse Friday
Died on Saturday
Buried on Sunday
And that was the end
Of Solomon Grundy!
– “which is a gloomy story, but remarkably similar to yours or mine.” – George Orwell, “Nonsense Poetry,” The Tribune, 21 December 1945.
This is the knife with the handle of horn
That killed the cock that crowed in the morn
That waked the priest all shaven and shorn
That married the groom all tattered and torn
Unto the maiden all forlorn
That milked the cow
That sat on the dog
That killed the cat
That ate the rat
That turned the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.
Fuckin’ grim! Always find myself wanting to read it out loud in a Vincent Price voice.
Are there any nursery rhymes you find disturbing, or scary, or depressing, or not really suited for children?
Well there’s always the “rockabye baby, at least until you fall out of the tree and plummet to the ground” lullaby.
You are surprised that they are called the Brothers Grimm?
Good one – but they collected fairy tales, not nursery rhymes. And German tales, not English.
Before someone comes along to claim that Ring Around the Rosey refers to the bubonic plague, I’ll post this link to Snopes that says it’s false.
Virtually all nursery rhymes and fairy tales originated before the era of Disney and the modern urge to sanitize the world. People used to have a more direct connection to the world, including unpleasant things like death and disease, and didn’t feel it necessary to shield children from them. I mean, look at all the horrible things that happen in some of the original Grimm and Andersen fairy tales.
Oranges and lemons
Say the bells of St Clements
You owe me five farthings
Say the bells of St Martins
When will you pay me?
Say the bells of Old Bailey
When I grow rich
Say the bells of Shoreditch
When will that be?
Say the bells of Stepney
I’m sure I don’t know
Says the great bell at Bow
**Here comes a candle to light you to bed
Here comes a chopper to chop off your head
Chop chop chop chop the last man’s head!**
Nursery rhymes are among the disturbing songs discussed in an earlier thread
However, during the era of Victorian prudery, many rhymes were re-written to make them safe for chi9ldren. This often made them totally nonsensical.
Fingers and Toes:
Every lady in this land
Has twenty nails, upon each hand
Five, and twenty on hands and feet:
All this is true, without deceit.
Three Wise Men of Gotham:
Three wise men of Gotham
Went to sea in a bowl;
If the bowl had been stronger
My song would be longer.
A verse from The Carrion Crow:
The tailor he shot, and missed his mark,
Fol de riddle, lol de riddle, hi ding do!
And shot his own sow quite through the heart;
Sing heigh-ho, the carrion crow,
Fol de riddle, lol de riddle, hi ding do!
A Man in Our Town:
There was a man in our town,
And he was wondrous wise,
He jumped into a bramble bush,
And scratched out both his eyes;
But when he saw his eyes were out,
With all his might and main,
He jumped into another bush,
And scratched 'em in again.
Jerry Hall:
Jerry Hall, he was so small,
A rat could eat him, hat and all.
Cry, Baby, Cry.
Cry, baby, cry,
Put your finger in your eye,
And tell your mother it wasn’t I.
And of course, Who Killed Cock Robin? and the rest.
The venerable Mother Goose is pretty grim when she’s herself.
This one has six verses, all with the same chorus:
Oh, what have you got for dinner, Mrs Bond?
There’s beef in the larder, and ducks in the pond;
Dilly, dilly, dilly, dilly, come to be killed,
For you must be stuffed and my customers filled!
Medieval European Millers usually had a monopoly on grinding grain given them by the local lord. Although their rates were often also set by the lord (usually as a portion of the flour produced), locals had the choice of paying up or hand grinding their grain. Millers weren’t nobles, but they were often significantly wealthier than others of their class, which caused a bit of animosity, as is displayed in the verse above.
Not that I have a cite linking the verse to millers’ monopolies. About when did the verse originate? Anyone know?
Wee Willy Winkie runs through the town
Upstairs, downstairs, in his nightgown.
Peeping in the windows, crying through the locks,
“Are the children all in bed? For now it’s eight o’clock.”
Leaving aside the little peeping Tom’s name (although judging from my anthology of Victorian erotica, “willy” was a euphemism for the penis even back in those innocent times, and probably a lot earlier; I have no idea how far back “winkie” goes), the image of some guy racing around town in a nightgown looking in windows and making demands through the keyhole has always struck me as Very Vaguely Creepy.
Milk, Milk
Lemonade
'Round the corner fudge is made
Stick your finger up the hole
Out comes a Tootsie Roll
Baby, Baby
Stick your head in gravy
Wash it off with bubblegum
Send it to the Navy
Girls go to Jupiter to get more stupider
Boys go to Mars to get candy bars
Me Chinese
Me play joke
Me put pee pee in your Coke!
You should read William Blake’s poetry. Ja, he’s not known for nursery rhymes now, but in the 16th century and onwards his poetry was widely read to children. Parents thought they were children’s rhymes, but they’re really pretty stunning and damning depictions of social injustice. It’s chilling.
Goosey, goosey, gander,
Whither dost thou wander?
Upstairs and downstairs
And in my lady’s chamber.
There I met an old man
Who wouldn’t say his prayers;
I took him by the left leg,
And threw him down the stairs.
…and the moral of the story, children, is always say your prayers or a psychopathic farm animal will toss you down a flight of stairs and break your neck.
Another squash-related case of domestic abuse!
They’re much funnier when read as Peter Lorre.
No cite needed. Anyone who reads European Medieval Lit knows the Miller Stereotype. Wealthy, greedy, lecherous, brutal. Usually the cuckold, too. Sorta a god way for everyman to get even with the bastid.
I think he is perhaps meant to be more of a “sandman” sort of thing - I mean, goingn around to ensure that the children were all properly safely asleep etc. The mother of the unsleeping child seems quite happy to greet WWW, mentioning that the cat and the dog are all happily snoozy, but here’s a little boy that won’t go to sleep yet.
http://www.rampantscotland.com/poetry/blpoems_winkie.htm
And now, dammit, I can’t recall which nursery rhymes I always think of as slightly sinister, though, goodness know, many of them are!
“Jack and Jill”, I suppose, sounds like a tale of a pretty Bad Day.
Jack and Jill went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water;
Jack fell down and broke his crown,.
And Jill came tumbling after.
Up got Jack and home did he trot,
As fast as he could caper;
Went to bed and bound his head,
With vinegar and brown paper.
When Jill came in how she did grin
To see Jack’s paper plaster;
Mother vexed, did whip her next;
For causing Jack’s disaster
Hmm, why does Jill get blamed, eh? :dubious: