Why is MOTHER GOOSE so darn mean?
September 1, 2010 by darn
Filed under Darn Meaning
I remember as a child my grandmother used to read mother goose nursery rhymes to me. I remember some of them scared me to death. Like “The old woman who lived in the shoe” i mean at the end of that rhyme she didn’t feed her kids she spanked them and put them in bed. It aint the kids fault that the woman was good at making babies lol.
Then you have “When the bow breaks the cradle will fall”
Then you have “Melissa Sweeps the Room” which talks about a little girl sweeping the entire house.
And my son has a nursery rhyme CD and there is one on there that says “Lady bug, Lady bug fly away home, your house is on fire and your children will burn” Then there is “Ring around the Rosies” which if I am correct was referring to scarlet fever and children running frantic and “we all fall down” which refers to them dying, my history teacher told me this when I was in college. Now that I have kids of my own, we stick to just reading like Dora and Baby Einstein lol. Why were nursery rhymes so mean?
lol I know what you mean. I love Baby Einstein and so does my 13 month old little girl.
I have an old nursery school rhyme that sings about making a baby a blanket out of sheep’s skin. ew.
They aren’t mean. They were written in a time when children needed to learn harsh lessons fast if they wanted to survive childhood. Put into rhymes and made into songs made it easier for children to learn important things. For a lot of them, the reason and lesson that was to be learned is no longer valid and long forgotten.
LOL!! I’ve thought about that many times!! Almost every nursery rhyme has a tragic ending.
It’s in just about every Disney movie too. Bambi’s momma gets shot, Dumbo gets separated from his momma, etc..
But every single Disney movie has a ‘moral’ to it. I’ve wondered why some of the nursery rhymes are whacked and without teaching a lesson. Strange!