HOLY COW!

It’s fairly well accepted that the contents of a number of nursery rhymes reflect pieces of actual history. Why? Many nursery rhymes originated in times when life was harsh. They often reflected societal issues, such as poverty, disease, and war. The realities of life during these periods influenced the themes of the rhymes. Also, there was no internet nor telephones. So I guess the adults talked to each other. Still, I can’t imagine adults sharing references of that kind with children.

The domain of once oral “folk” material that children have kept alive—folktales and fairy tales; fables, sayings, riddles, charms, tongue twisters; folksongs, lullabies, hymns, carols, and other simple poetry; rhymes of the street, the playground, the nursery; and, supremely, Mother Goose, and other “nonsense” verse, bubbles around us, often forgotten or disremembered.

The idea that little children through the ages may have been parroting references to grizzly actions they surely did not understand is difficult for me to process. I can remember rocking one of my own while singing Bye Baby Bunting, and as a child myself skipping rope to Cinderella and joining hands with friends, singing Ring Around the Rosey, pockets full of posies. I knew nothing of the plague and that posies helped cover the smell of death during the plague. I must have been busy cleaning the blackboard or something, because I can remember only Cinderella…went upstairs to kiss her fellow and Black Sheep, Black Sheep, have you any wool while jumping rope. Maybe a trace of Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear also..

And I kind of always worried about the end of Rockabye Baby. Stay tuned for what’s inside those juicy rhymes.

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WHAT!?

“We’re living in a world where facts instantly perish upon contact with human minds,” George Packer wrote in The Atlantic this month. “Local news is disappearing, and a much-depleted national press can barely compete with the media platforms of billionaires who control users algorithmically, with an endless stream of conspiracy theories and deepfakes. The internet, which promised to give everyone information and a voice, has consolidated in just a few hands the power to destroy the very notion of objective truth.”

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