The idea of nursery rhymes, a story or poem told to small children, has been around since time began, but it was in 1820 that the term nursery rhyme comes into the vernacular. Before that term arrived, the verses and stories were known as ditties, or Tom Thumb songs. The American choice was Mother Goose rhymes.
Some of the rhymes have violent and sadistic tones and there have been several attempts to ban and /or censor some of the more adult sounding rhymes. There have even been groups who felt they should not be told to children at all. This is very similar to the history of fairy tales.
Bawdy Ballads and Tavern Limericks
The truth is that nursery rhymes were not intended for children at all. Some of the earliest rhymes were verses from randy ballads and others were street games. Some were also tavern limericks, spoofs of religious practices and mockeries of social events.
In The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, Iona and Peter Opie stated, “We can say almost without hesitation that, of those pieces which date from before 1800, the only true rhymes composed especially for the nursery are the rhyming alphabets, the infant amusements and the lullabies…. The overwhelming majority of the nursery rhymes were not in the first place composed for children.”
Little Boy Blue
Some of the nursery rhymes have a foothold in truth and history. The rhymes became a way to pass on a little of history in the form of limerick. The rhyme Little Boy Blue is a great example. The boy is believed to be the influential sixteenth-century statesman and cardinal Thomas Wolsey who dominated the government of England from 1515 to 1529. Though he was supposed to be priestly and pure, he fathered two illegitimate children. He kept causing so many problems that the king charged him with overstepping his boundaries and stripped him of his titles and power. Because Thomas tended sheep as a young boy, the limerick is said to represent his fall from grace.
A poem with a dark history is Cock-a doodle-doo. This nursery rhyme from the early 17th Century England is associated with an extremely gruesome event that happened at the end of the reign of Elizabeth I. A young girl witnessed the murder of a three year-old boy and her tongue was cut out to prevent her from telling. The story states that the kids made fun of her when she couldn’t talk until she was able to utter the rhyme.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
There Was a Little Girl is one of those rhymes that is often told to children who are misbehaving. The rhyme tells the story about a girl who is alternatively very good or very bad. This rhyme is one of the few that the author is known. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote the rhyme about his daughter, Edith. She refused to have her hair curled. Longfellow often denied authorship of the rhyme but before his death in 1882 he admitted to composing the nursery rhyme.
Little Jack Horner is said to be about Thomas Horner, a sixteenth-century steward to Richard Whiting, Abbot of Glastonbury. During a turbulent time, the Abbot sent Thomas to London with a Christmas pie to ease tension between Glastonbury and London. This was no ordinary pie. Hidden beneath the crust lay the deeds of title to twelve manor houses. The abbot hoped the titles would please the King. However on the way to the King, Horner reached into the pie and pulled out a deed for himself. His deceit was never proven and his descendants still live in the house.
The London Bridge nursery rhyme is one of the more recognizable of the children’s rhymes. The first verse actually refers to the actual destruction by King Olaf of Norway of a timber version of the famous bridge in the eleventh century. The actual rhyme is very long and tells the history of the bridge and the attempts to rebuild it. There are several stories associated with the bridge. Among the earliest are stories of human sacrifice and burying people alive in the foundations as sacrifices. Children’s skeletons have been unearthed in the foundations of other bridges from Greece to Germany, so the rumors would not be abated. The first nontimber London Bridge, built in 1176 by Peter of Colechurch, was splattered with the blood of young children for good luck.
Mary, Queen of Scots
A nursery rhyme from 18th century England, Mary, Mary has two different schools of thought about its origins. The first one is that it represents nuns and the Virgin Mary but the second one is the more believable of the two. This one states that the Mary was Mary, Queen of Scots and the pretty maids all in a row, were the four Marys who waited on her: Mary Seaton, Mary Fleming, Mary Livingston, and Mary Beaton. The second explanation is the one given most often by authors of nursery rhyme books.
The Ring around the Rosey rhyme also has a terrible history. While the rhyme first appeared in a Mother Goose book in 1881, it has an oral history that goes back to the time of the Great Plague in 1664. 70,000 deaths were attributed to the plague that was caused by a bacteria transmitted by rat fleas. The ring around the rosey refers to a circular red rash that was a symptom of the disease. Pocket full of posies relates to the flowers people carried to cover the smell of death.
Nursery rhymes have not changed much since their beginning and children still repeat them while playing. It would surprise many children, as well as their parents, to know exactly what they are saying when quoting these rhymes.
References:
Opie, Iona and Peter. The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes. California: Oxford Press, 1959
Franz, Marie Louis. The Interpretation of Fairy Tales. Spring Publication, 1970
Brenda Gargus - Brenda Gargus has a Masters' degree in Psychology and an undergraduate degree in Education. She has taught for 29 years in a variety of ...
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