10 Dark Origins of Nursery Rhymes
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 มิ.ย. 2024
- Nursery rhymes like "London Bridge Is Falling Down" and "Ring Around the Rosie" are commonly sung by children on the playground, but what were those songs originally about?
What do alcohol taxes have to do with "Jack and Jill?" Is "Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush" originally about prison inmates?
In this episode of The List Show, Erin shares the surprisingly dark origins of 10 seemingly innocent nursery rhymes.
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Timestamps just for you! Have a great day :D
0:00 London Bridge is Falling Down
3:26 Mary Mary Quite Contrary
4:23 Three Blind Mice
5:01 Goosey Goosey Gander
6:00 Jack And Jill
7:18 Baa Baa Black Sheep
7:43 Eeny Meeny Miny Mo
8:12 Rock-a-bye Baby
9:07 Here We Go ‘Round The Mulberry Bush
9:38 Ring Around The Rosie
My mom didn't like our new nursery rhymes we learned in school: Liar liar pants on fire, hanging from a telephone wire. Shame shame we know your name, your name is.... .... ....
There was a little bird, no bigger than a turd, sitting on a telephone pole. He stretched his little neck, & (sh it) pooped about a peck, & puckered up his little (@$$) but hole.
Jingle bells. Batman smells. Robin laid an egg. The bat mobile lost it's wheel, & joker got away.
Old mother Hubbard went to the cupboard to get her dog a bone. When she bent over the dog took over & she got a bone of her own. Kids can be so cruel... thanks older siblings. 😆
Beautiful singing voice you have...my fair lady.
The other problem with Jack and Jill: Why are they going to the top of a hill to fetch a pail of water.
Putting a wall on top of a hill would be stupid, as the water table will be farther from the surface. Springs don't appear on top of hills because water always flows down hill, even under ground.
Finally, rivers are at the bottom of valley's not the top of hills.
I'm not sure what Jack and Jill were up to at the top of the hill, but it wasn't to fetch a pail of water.
We moved to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1954. My classmates taught me eeny-meeny the way they knew it. I came home with no idea how awful it was and sang it to my mother. She was horrified and let me know it was unacceptable. In no uncertain terms.
As for another story, we lived in Japan during the Occupation and my sister learned a children's game. It involved singing - in Japanese - "Just a moment if you please," followed by another phrase and a rapid descent of two players' linked arms. Decades later, coworkers and I were talking about childhood songs and I sang that one. They looked at me dumbfounded because I had not realized I was using the London Bridge tune. How did an English-language game get adopted and adapted in Japan? I have no idea.
As someone from Japanese descent, I was taught a Japanese song to the tune of London Bridge too, but it was basically meaningless - “moshi, moshi, ano ne … aa so desu ka”
@@amai_zing So funny. We also ended with aa so desu ka. But we started with something like Chotto Matte Kudasai and were told it meant "Just a moment if you please" while other children ran under our outstretched arms. And we then captured - we hope - someone with that last line. Did you do the same?
My stepdad was born in 54 and also learned it that way with eeny meeny miney moe. He doesn't recite it but was confused when he heard my youngest sister recite it with a tiger instead.
For us in the UK, ring a ring of roses had the line of achoo, achoo, we all fall down. Not ashes. It's believed to be a reference to the great plague or the black death.
@♼𝙬𝙝𝙖𝙩𝙨𝙖𝙥𝙥±𝟭𝟮𝟱𝟭𝟮𝟯𝟭𝟵𝟮𝟰𝟯 How about no.
@@FireDragonAndromeda it's a bot. Better than reply is report.
Only the gullible believe that. The plague origin story has been completely debunked.
@@jdb47games That's why I said "it's believed..."
In the movie KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS, you can hear the *original* "eenie meenie..." and I remember when I first saw it (late 80s most likely) I thought "Catch a WHAT by the toe?"
I was born in 1989, and where I growed up we still sang the racist version of eenie meanie when I was very young - young enough to be using eenie meanie, and young enough to have no clue what all the words I was saying meant
The way I heard the jack and jill song was it giving medical advice. Apparently it is possible to make a cold compress using water and paper, like his paper crown. Or Something.
I always thought crown meant head
Shel Silverstein's take on Rockabye Baby is great.
Did not expect to see the master piece "Dunkacino" in this video but I ain't mad
Ba ba black sheep? My view is that it refers to taxation. The three bags are allocated to The Master - The King, The Dame - The Church (as the bride of Christ), and the little boy who lives in the lane, a reference to the homeless who sleep rough in a hedge beside a rural lane.
It's historically "none for the little lad who lives down the lane"
Not as dark as most, but "Rub a dub dub, three men in a tub" is about corruption and scandal at the time, in the mid/late 1700s.
I remember hearing the slur for einy meiny mini mo, ( sorry for the misspelling) in the '60's
Humpty Dumpty is actually about an egg having a great autumn, but they changed the lyric from autumn to fall to appeal to the American audience
Actually humpty Dumpty was not an 🥚 but a human boy
The humpty hump was a song.
Dude - I’m stealing this joke!!!😂😂😂
@@missoula2213 DOIN IT BABY
Humpty was not an egg.
He was a prince.
One that exsisted and died of a head injury.
Not sure where you got egg from or this fall palava... esp as fall is actually an English saying.
Fall of the leaf as we used to say.
We changed to autumn a few hundred years ago.
Checked in to see the Ring Around the Rosies coverage. From the preceding items I figured you were going to get it right and you did. I got it from a researcher in such things as ring games way back in the 90's on a BBS.
I was always troubled calling it a mulberry bush... it's a tree
Interesting, thank you for the video.
Absolute drivel ... "some people say ... experts disagree ... you be the judge!"
Mary Mary quite contrary is about Mary Queen of Scots. Watch Disney's The Truth about Mother Goose. That's where I get all my information.
Word! Vintage Disney represent!
A little bias there...
My favorite nursery rhyme from childhood is old McDonald had a farm and i hate cows and I Love horses and clowns ❤❤❤❤❤❤
I always wondered what London Bridge is Falling Down means as a kid
Excellent singing 😊
Okay, who here remembers Andrew Dice Clay and his take on this?
"Little boy blew.... he needed the money. Ooohhh!" 🤣
A "race" of ginger is a ginger root, very precious in older times. I don't know whether geese eat ginger, but they might.
Tbh, I think that any number of nursery rhymes are no more than "nonsense songs". When I was a kid (born in the UK in the mid-60s), we had any number of silly, often tongue-twisting songs, often used for skipping to or playing ball. We'd play with two tennis balls, throwing and catching them in turn (a sort of half-juggling act) against a wall to the rhythm of a rhyming (and/or counting) song we'd be singing at the same time. Thinking back we had some awesome hand-eye coordination.
It would start with both balls being thrown underarm (the second being thrown by the same hand that threw the first one at the time the first one hit the wall, and catching the first with the non-throwing hand just before the second one hit the wall. You had just enough time to hoick the first ball back into your throwing hand before letting it go again, keeping in time to the rhyme you were singing.
The second verse or just a second run through the rhyme would mean that you changed your type of throw to overarm. And so on with a bunch of different ways of throwing the balls (under right leg, etc) until you either finished the set of throws or you made a mistake and then it was your friend's turn. Thinking back I'm amazed at how talented we were!
Re Eeni-meenie, that just reinforced how innocent we were, bearing in mind that we didn't have segregation or anything else as abhorrent - thank god - and I lived in a Welsh village which at the time didn't know what the meaning of "multicultural" was. Not out of bad reasons, just that barely anyone from elsewhere in the world (like England 😆) knew that we were there and didn't come there. Later on it did, but not in the early 70s.
Anyway, _that_ line from the song was, to us, "Catch a _nicker_ by his toe." A "nicker" _obviously_ being someone who nicked things, i.e. a thief. (It was a very definite "ck" sound, btw, it couldn't have been mistaken for anything else.) I honestly never connected that rhyme with that disgusting word! Not until tonight! I mean, why would I think about it as an adult? My kids had a different word 25-30+ years later - can't remember what, something with two syllables, but they didn't use it much.
Being in a different part of the country and all that, a change of words never crossed my mind as having "a reason", because there are numerous small differences in lots of such things and sayings everywhere! Just goes to show that you need to stop and ask if people know what they're saying when repeating an old saying or poem _before_ jumping on them! There's a good chance they haven't given the meaning a second thought and they most probably don't want to be offensive.
Btw, in Ring-a-ring of roses, our third line is "Atichoo, atichoo, we all fall down". So we weren't going around burning up but sneezing!
--titular-- eponymous
She was the titular Queen of Scotland, the title being "queen". She allegedly is the eponymous Mary of the rhyme, the name ("nym") being "Mary".
I was always taught that london bridge is fallung down was about the great fire of london.
In a different video I watched it's more of like a collaboration of just how many times the bridge fell and was rebuilt. Kind of makes me think the damn area is just cursed.
she got pipes.
And of course there's "Ring around the rosie!"
They mentioned that...
I grew up using, "catch a tiger by the toe," but knew about the racist version of it. I don't think I ever used it or heard it used. It was just like an awareness that it was there. I think it was my mother that told me about the racist version and that she had grown up using that version. It was a much different time.
My bf and I grew up in the same city in Florida. He grew up with the racist version and I didn't know about the racist version until we started dating in my 30s.
That thing about the Daddy Long Legs is like the world's darkest version of 'he loves me, he loves me not'
😂
Its kind of fun that Americans have so many British songs.
Hell, our national anthem's music is a British drinking song *facepalm*
Because that’s where they’re from
I mean, we were ruled by them until 1776, and even then, we are of their descent.
I thought Humpty Dumpty was about an lady’s honor
Baa, baa black sheep became sheep do you have white wool in Dutch.
Ring around the Rosie real one is this
Ring around the Rosie pocket, full of posies ashes ashes, we all fall dead.
The posies are from the Black death, because people thought that they would ward off the Black Death .the ashes ashes is they would burn the people that died form the Black Death they would burn t e house and the people ones they died
⚠️not to scare ya⚠️
I hate you, you hate me
Let's go out and kill Barney
With shotgun blast he's laying on the floor
No more purple dinosaur
Jingle bells, Batman smells
Robin laid an egg
Batmobile lost a wheel
And Joker got away
Kid's Rhymes don't need dark origins because kids will twist them in that direction anyways!🤪
Yeah, except who originally came up with them? The barney song is a parody I guarantee you teens made, and with the Batman smells, pretty sure those were fans that just made yet again a wacky parody. These aren't exactly parodies and came about during a far more serious time.
Way to butcher «heimskringla»
autostart videos in article is auto thumbs down
I like the baa baa black sheep song since childhood. I will not let it take away by some woke nuts
I miss the Green brothers. They were more entertaining, and didn't look like they are just reading a script.
Speak for yourself.
Oh my... Thomas CRAN-Mer, not "Cramer": en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Cranmer
I find it very odd that historians have to find some hidden, mysterious, religious, political or dark sinister meaning to everything that people did in the past. Song, dances, architecture or art. Nobody in the past ever did anything for just shits and giggles. There's no possible way that children made up a rhyme just about a black sheep. It's inconceivable that at some point in history there could have been not only a boy named Jack but he had a friend named Jill that for some reason decided to go up a hill to fetch a pail of water. Every archaeological dig site is full of strange metallic sculptures that must have some significant hidden meaning or use. Couldn't possibly be a blacksmith with some left over material that he made into a funny shape he dreamed about just to sit on a mantelpiece and look cool! Sometimes things are just things! People in the future will find a whole bunch of shopping trolleys at the bottom of a flooded quarry and think this must have been a great place of cultural significance because 3 of them lined up with Orion's belt!
You're quite correct. Looking for meaning in nursery rhymes is just seeing faces in clouds.