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Who dreams up Nursery Rhymes?

March 16th, 2009 * Comments(2)

Have you ever stopped to consider the nursery rhymes we all learn as kids? The lyrics seem nonsensical and fun enough, until you spend some time actually contemplating them. As I’ve recited (over and over again) some of the most common rhymes to Arav from the book he loves playing with, I’ve been thinking about the dark subtext to these rhymes. Here’s what I see:

  • Ring Around The Rosie: About the black plague that killed many thousands in London, making them “all fall down”
  • Humpty Dumpty: Story of police brutality gone bad
  • Sing a Song of Sixpence: Assassination attempt (by poisoning) on the King
  • Three Blind Mice: Cruelty against physically disabled animals
  • See-saw, Margery Daw: Exploitation of the Working Class
  • Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater: Oppression of women
  • Rub-a-Dub-Dub: Story of a gay menage-a-trois discovered, resulting in the men being persecuted and run out of town
  • Little Bo Peep and Little Boy Blue: Both rhymes about incompetent farm hands
  • It’s Raining, It’s Pouring: Euthanasia of the elderly

And the one to top them all

  • Rock-a-bye-baby: Sadistic dream of a serial killer of babies

So, are there other nursery rhymes you learnt as a kid that are hiding dark messages?

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2 Comments so far

  1. Ramyata @ March 17th, 2009

    Amazing facts.. I was stunned by what you wrote cause actually no one looks at these rhymes with such a perspective. Amazing sight!!

  2. Margarete Wolfram @ May 9th, 2010

    It comes to show that adults pay far more attention to the meaning of words, while children are captured by the sweet sound pattern of the poems.

    The German literature contains different nursery rhymes but they are just as brutal. I was shocked to find as an adult that a lullaby that I especially cherished during my childhood invites a young child to sleep for a long time. His mother has gone away and will never come back. The next verse steps up the advertisement and tells about the lovely games the angels will play with the baby if it follows its mother to heaven.

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