Nursery Rhymes

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The other day I was playing with Norah in her room and I decided to pull a nursery rhyme book off the shelf to read to her. Apparently I have never really taken the time to listen to the words of some of the more common nursery rhymes. What were the authors thinking?!?! (Please read this as me being humorous, I'm not looking to boycott any nursery rhymes!)

It started off innocent enough with Hey Diddle Diddle - nothing wrong there. Hickory Dickory Dock, nothing too odd. Then we get to some more interesting ones such as Little Miss Muffet. Now this one isn't really that big of a deal, could be kind of scary because poor Miss Muffet was scared by a spider sitting beside her - but really we know kids love The Itsy Bitsy Spider so this one is no biggie.

The next one is pretty common, Rock-a-bye Baby. I have always known the words to this but when I never really thought about it. We are singing to our children about a little baby swinging from a cradle on a blustery day when suddenly the tree breaks and the baby falls. Uh what??!

How sad is Old Mother Hubbard? "Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard to get her poor dog a bone. But when she got there, the cupboard was bare, and so the poor dog had none." Poor doggie! Now I'm all for teaching my kids to be sympathetic, I'm just not sure I want to bum them out right before falling asleep.

Now we have Humpty Dumpty. The poor thing fell off a wall and no one was able to fix him.

We all know about the women in the shoe right? Did you know that she was not a happy mother?
"There was old woman who lived in a show, she had so many children, she didn't know what to do. She gave them some brother without any bread, then whipped them all soundly and put them to bed."
Woah. Now if that isn't a happy story I don't know what is.

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The last one must have been written by a mom that couldn't get their kid to say their nighttime prayers. "Goosey Goosey Gander, whither shall I wander? Upstairs and downstairs in my lady's chamber. There I met an old man who would not say his prayers, I took him by the left leg and threw him down the stairs."

Now what about the catchy little tune, Ring Around the Rosie. We are cheerfully singing about people dying from the plague in London. "Ashes, Ashes, we all fall down" is about the bodies being cremated.  Nice.

I even read a rhyme to my 9 month old about live birds being baked into a pie and then singing when the king went to eat it. I hope she doesn't now have nightmares about her food having live animals popping out of it.