I've already complained about Rock-a-by-baby but I am appalled to learn that it doesn't stop there.
Some words from Ellie's latest favorite book of "well-loved" nursery rhymes:
See-Saw, Margery Daw
See-saw, Margery Daw,
Johnny shall have a new master;
He shall have but a penny a day,
because he can't work any faster.
Goosey, Goosey, Gander
Goosey, goosey, gander,
whither shall I wander?
Upstairs and downstairs
And in my lady's chamber.
There I met an old man
Who would not say his prayers.
I took him by the left leg
and threw him down the stairs.
Georgie Porgie
Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie,
Kissed the girls and made them cry;
when the boys came out to play,
Georgie Porgie ran away.
Little Tommy Tucker
Little Tommy Tucker
sings for his supper:
What shall we give him?
White bread and butter.
How shall he cut it
without a knife?
How will he be married
without a wife?
7 comments:
I'm not sure I see what you're reading into the last two. Or maybe I'm failing to understand what they mean?
Georgie seems to like girls more than boys. My third is like that.
As for Tommy, usually it takes a spouse to consider someone married. If I didn't have a wife, I don't think I'd be married. I don't see what's bothersome about it.
As for a nursery rhyme that does bother me, it's Ring Around the Rosies. Some think it's talking about the London Plague. Seems a rather macabre subject to sing to my kids.
MJH, good point. I definitely think that Goosey Goosey Gander is the worst of the examples I gave.
When I read See-Saw Margery Daw I'm sure I'm letting my experience with my brother affect me reading the lines as though they're saying Johnny isn't as worth of a person because he doesn't work faster. My own doing.
Honestly I don't know what bothered me about Georgie Porgie. I must have been in a different mood when I wrote the post.
The thing I don't like about Little Tommy Tucker is that I feel like the last sentence has nothing to do with the previous ones. I read it and thought that it was a weird ending and thought "so what?" But then again, the dish did run away with the spoon in one nursery rhyme.
THANK YOU! I was trying to remember the one that I really didn't like and you thought of it! Ring around the rosies is incredibly sad, for the exact reason why you mentioned. When I learned that I was really surprised.
The commonality between the last two lines of Tommy is the answer to the questions: It's impossible. You can't cut your bread w/out a knife in the same way that you can't be married w/out a wife. Both are impossible.
I read that as making a suggestion that you should not ask the guy to do the impossible. Give him a knife, too.
Ah! Wow! Who would have thought that there were multiple ways to interpret nursery rhymes. Where are the classes to teach you such things? Maybe then I would know the words to some of them. Ha!
I wrote a similar post after reading some stories to Cooper. They're not all appropriate!
http://derichsweilerfamily.blogspot.com/2008/07/saucy-cupid.html
I totally agree about those old fashioned nursery rhymes.
I hate that one about the throwing some guy down the stairs for not saying his prayers.
What about...
"It's raining it's pouring, the old man is snoring. He went to bed and he bumped his head and he couldn't get up in the morning." Maybe it's my background but I always worry about that old guy with some kind of concussion that can't wake up.
Then there's
Four and 20 Blackbirds Baked in a pie- that last bit: "The maid was in the garden hanging out the clothes, when down came a blackbird and pecked off her nose." That's a mean bird!
and what about that poor Ladybug and her burning children:
"Ladybug ladybug fly away home,
Your house is on fire and your children they will burn."
and not to be too graphic but we are particularly disturbed by the old fashioned terms for cats and roosters--
An excerpt from The Owl and the Pussy Cat:
"The owl looked up to the stars above and sang to a small guitar-Oh lovely pussy, oh pussy my love, what a beautiful pussy you are, you are you are! What a beautiful pussy you are."
and then there are the drug references...
"They sailed away for a year and a day to the land where the bong tree grows. And there in the wood a piggy wig stood with a ring at the end of his nose, his nose. With a ring at the end of his nose."
I generally substitue kitty for pussy in all these rhymes when I read them to A.
Crazy old nursery rhymes.
Salina, thanks for sharing!
KC, I loved your examples! They made me laugh in a "Yeah, that's exactly what I meant" sort of way!
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