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Nursery Rhymes

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Pete Younger

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Does anyone have any thoughts on the true meaning of nursery rhymes, ie Jack and Jill is supposed to have sexual connotations, I believe there are many more that reflect on the times that they were written, any examples?
 
i was just going to post the one about the plague, but i didnt know about the jack and jill one having sexual connetations

its a sad world where even nursary rhymes have sexual links

cas
 
Are we not entering the same sort of realms here where Andy Pandy got accused of bonking Luby-Lou in the toy-box.

Wonder why I never made that connection as a 3 year old?
 
I recall reading some where that Ring a Roses was not about the plague, as is popularly imagined, but annoyingly can't remember more details.

See saw Marjory Daw
Jack shall have a new master
he shall have but a penny a day
because he can't work any faster

was a re-write of an older Cornish rhyme -

See saw Marjory Daw
sold her bed & laid on straw
sold the straw & laid on hay
wasn't she a dirty slut to live this way (or alternatively - then Pisky came & took her away)

I believe the rhyme was rewritten as some kind of political ditty in the 19th Century, but again I'm let down by my swiss cheese memory. If I remembered half what I once knew I'd be a genius
:)

Could the Jack & Jill sexual connotation come from the playground corruption -

Jack & Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water,
I don't know what they did up there, but now they've got a daughter ;)

I highly recommend the work of Iona & Peter Opie to any one interested in adapted nursery rhymes & playground lore in general.
 
I've heard that some nursery rhymes were political satires, such as Mary, Mary Quite Contrary referring to Mary Queen of Scots, but I've heard other people dispute this.
 
Ring a ring of rosies can only be dated back to 1880's, although there is an American version (ring a ring a rosie, a bottle full of posie, all the girls in our town ring for little Josie) dates from 1790. The notion of it relating to the symptoms of the plague seems to date from about the 1960's.

Jack and Jill started life as Jack and Gill, two boys, in about 1765, with only one verse. It was added to in the 19th century. The phrase 'Jack and Jill' simply means boy and girl, as in 'Jack shall have Jill, naught shall go ill' in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream.

I think a little too much importance can be placed on the origin of nursery rhymes - they seem to me to be just a simple collection of sounds that go well together for children to remember - simply nonsense verses. The 'analysis' probably reveals more about the analyst than the verse.

The 'Grand Old Duke of York' however, is based on historical fact. Apparently. Frederick Augustus, Duke of York, did march his men to the top of the hill and down again, with quite a few fatalities and casualties. I can't remember the battle now - it might have been something like Flanders in 1790ish.
 
two ive heard off

humpty dumpty- a cival war canon..

Georgie porgy- seriel killer ryme!
 
Little Jack Horner, is supposed to refer to a servant at Glastonbury Abbey at the Reformation.

The Abbot is supposed to have tried to keep the deeds of the Abbey properties from HenryVIII's men by putting them in a pie which Jack Horner was supposed to take to one of the Abbot's friends.

Jack checked under the crust & kept one of the deeds for himself, the 'plum' of the rhyme.

Oh! And if you do want a bit of phallic symbolism remember that rhyme:-

Cock-a-doodle-do the maid has lost her shoe,
The masters lost his fiddling stick & doesn't know what to do!!!
 
'Upstairs and downstairs and in my lady's chamber' - doesn't this have some civil war connection?

A symptom of Victorian repressed sexuality was the assigning of dubious double meanings to everything that sounded a bit old. This doesn't mean that they didn't sometimes have a point; I have heard one analysis of Jack and Jill state that the genders have been swapped here and there. Hence, *Jill* fell down and broke *her* crown. Which has a slightly different ring to it.

Am I mistaken in thinking that 'Eenie Meenie Minie Mo' has a very old pre-Christian (in Britain, anyway) tradition? Possibly Druidic, though how anyone would know is beyond me.

And 'Ip Dip dog shit' is about the Reformation, as everyone knows.
 
Eene, Meenie, Minie, Mo, is claimed to be one, two, three, four, in some early Celtic language, but likewise I don't know how any one could realy know this.:confused:
 
I understood some mumbo jumbo about Pop Goes the Weasel being related to weavers, weasel being the name of a weaver's shuttle, monkey's & mulberry bushes etc. being somehow linked inextricably in 18th century English slang to weavers. NOT testifying this is fact, just some guy on the corner stepped
out of the shadows and said that to me once and promptly melted back into the shadows. I think I am on firmer ground, famous last words, saying "pop goes the weasel" is the same as "pawn the weasel" so that the line "... that's the way the money goes, pop goes the weasel" makes some sense.

Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie may be Henry VIII, take your pick : getting the deeds to 24 monastery's as a surprise (sometimes related as literally baked in his pie) or the capture of 24 particularly recalcitrant priests/monks in the unrest that followed his seizure of the church's stuff. Alternatively I also understand this may refer to a famous Italian pastry of the 16th Century that literally baked birds in pie to fly out when it was
cut open. Apparently this was time went baking things into pies was all the rage, but then it did predate the internet or "Buffy", so what's a guy supposed to do for fun?.

Ultimately, I agree with "Helen" : I think that searching for literal meaning in the Rhymes is much like trying to make scripture be literally true. I imagine a 25th Century FT Thread where someone states with great authority that the taunting ryhme "nanny nanny poo poo ..." refers to a PM or President's diuretic Gran.
 
i also agree with helen and think they are just a groups of words that sound well together and are easy for kids to remember

cas
 
Mary, Mary, quite contrary
How does your garden grow
With silver bells
and cockle shells
and pretty maids all in a row.
silver bells - rung during Catholic mass
Cockle shells - a sign of pilgrimage to St James de Compostella(?)
Pretty maids all in a row - at the mass to celebrate her birthday Mary would wash the feet of virgins to show her humility
 
Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie may be Henry VIII,
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Black bird pie was a real dish eaten in West Cornwall. Presumably it would take a fair few, (2 dozen?), black birds to get a decent meal.
 
Well, they eat babies in West Cornwall, so why not blackbirds?
 
A vicar from St.Ives once told me that as a child he was terrified of going to, a fishing village about ten miles away, having been told "they do eat their young, up Newlyn" by a teacher.

The Cornish defend their culinary traditions fiercely. One pasty shop owner on the Lizard publicly burnt the U.S. flag when an American publication dared to criticsize the Cornish national dish. :madeyes:
 
Oky Kokie or is it oki Cokey (?)...Parody of Catholic mass?....
 
Georgie Porgie

Well, I thought this one was about one of the King Georges being a bit of a ladies man but also a bit of a wuss. Can't remember which one off the top of me head, though
 
Georgie porgie pudin and pie kissed the girls and made then cry... explained to me as a sinester charecter (north of UK?) who attacked women at night...could be wrong tho...

Sweet fanny Adams meaning not a lot.... canned meat served in the British Army sposedly after a grusom child murder/ dismemberment.....very black.
 
Lard said:
Well, they eat babies in West Cornwall, so why not blackbirds?
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I like the green ones best, I bite their heads off first, how do you eat yours?:p
 
Originally posted by garrick92


"Jack & Jill" does indeed have sexual connotations. I'm damned if I can remember how the whole thing runs, but the discovery of the unexpurgated version in a book in my middle-school library caused me and my cronies much mirth, years ago. One bit in the 2nd or 3rd verse runs: '... And Jill lay still / Her pail to fill / With milk and not with water.' After that, Jack discovers that he's gotten the clap, and 'Up Jack got / And off did trot / As fast as he could caper/ To old Dame Hob/Who patched his knob / With vinegar and brown paper'..!
Click to expand...


Thanx Garrick, thats basically what I remember reading some years ago.:p
 
p.younger said:
I like the green ones best, I bite their heads off first, how do you eat yours?:p
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But the green ones aren't ripe, Pete . . . you'll get tummyache if you eat too many!;)

Carole
 
garrick92 said:
The ones that have always perplexed me are 'Green Grow the Rushes, Oh!' and 'The Twelve Days of Christmas'. 'GGTRO' I reckon might be about Catholicism during persecution ('Five for the symbols at your door, and four for the Gospel majors'), but I can't make any sense of 'Three, three, the ri-i-i-ivals!' or 'Six for the six proud walkers' -- apparently GGTRO goes up to about 12 or so. Anyone know how it goes after 'Seven for the seven stars in the sky'? "12 Days", I'm perfectly happy to accept, is probably meaningless.
Click to expand...

8 for the April Rainers
9 for the 9 Bright Shiners
10 for the 10 Commandments
11 for the 11 who went to Heaven
12 for the 12 Apostles

Carole
 
for another song dealing with the performance of the Roman rite go here

Regarding GGTRO I've no idea what it means but there are a couple of net references to it being "collected" by Robbi Burns
 
im inclined to agree on the hoky coky thing.. sounds like magic Roundabout revisionism to me...
 
Nursery rhyme or nursery crime?

ID a ryme for me..(just recalled when reading the "who sung this song thread).... i remeber as a child being upset about something and my mum singing something soothing to try to calm me down...we were on hoiliday at Port Isaac (i remeber buying a blue plastic darlek with my holiday money)..anyway.... i heard her singing and at that moment the words sudenly registerd and i went into full hysterical abdabs mode....it went somthing like...

ted shot a swan in the heady with some leady......even now its sending shivers up me spine...what the hell was it?

has it some sinificance as per a news story/crime..like georgy Porgey?
 
Sorry jon, but I'm a-laughing at the idea that your mother sang a song about swans being slaughtered as a method of calming you down ...

Not familiar with that rhyme, but aren't 99% of nursery rhymes about something "sinister" anyways? Ring-a-ring-a-roses is about the plague or summat isn't it?
 
soposedly tho i think opinion is divided..certainly Georgy Porgey is said to be about a seriel asulter of girls!
 
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