Beloved nursery rhymes with horrifying origins (2024)

I imagine many of you have heard of Jack and Jill. If you remember, they climbed up the hill, Jack fell down and Jill came tumbling after. It used to seem like an innocent frolic, a children’s jape, but it turns out its real meaning is far darker and more portentous. And that, in fact, seems to be true of many other nursery rhymes I used to love.

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Another much-loved nursery rhyme “Baa Baa Black Sheep” has even older origins. In the 13th century, King Edward the First imposed an extremely harsh wool tax on farmers — one-third for the King or Master, one-third for the Church or Dame and one-third for the farmers. An older version of the rhyme ends “but none for the little boy, who cries down the lane”. In other words, there was very little for the people who actually cultivated the wool.

Do you remember “Old Mother Hubbard”, for whom “the cupboard was bare”? Well, it seems she wasn’t even a woman, if this article is to be believed. Old Mother Hubbard is supposed to be Cardinal Wolsey, who fell into Henry the Eighth’s bad books because he couldn’t get him a divorce. The king is the “poor dog” and the divorce is the “bone”. The “cupboard” is the Catholic Church. Hmmm...

Now, one of my favourite nursery rhymes is “Georgie Porgie Pudding and Pie”. There are many naughty versions of this that I will not repeat, but they’re not as inaccurate as I had always assumed. Georgie, it transpires, is none other than George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham, who was once rumoured to be King James the First’s lover. Is that, perhaps, why the girls cried when he kissed them? But why did he run away when the boys came out to play?

A favourite of the teacher who taught me in kindergarten was “Ring-a-Ring-a-Roses” which, this article says, is actually “Ring around the Rosie”. Anyway, its origin lies embedded in the Great Plague of 1665. When “we all fall down”, we’re dead. Thank God the little children, who skipped around the school garden tunelessly singing this rhyme, weren’t aware of its actual meaning.

Interestingly, several nursery rhymes have their origin in Tudor times. “Mary Mary Quite Contrary” refers to Queen Mary, who reigned briefly between her short-lived half-brother, Edward the Sixth, and her glorious and successful half-sister, who first made the name Elizabeth famous. The “silver bells” and “co*ckle shells” are torture devices popular in her day. The “pretty maids all in a row” is a euphemistic reference to hundreds of women burnt at the stake for the crime of being Protestant. Mary attempted to re-impose Catholicism after her father, Henry VIII, had forcibly converted the country to the Church of England.

Another, that comes from the same time, is “Three Blind Mice”. They’re supposed to be three Protestant bishops who Mary burned at the stake for treason and heresy — Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Radley and Thomas Cranmer, then Archbishop of Canterbury. “It was mistakenly believed that she also blinded and dismembered them, as the rhyme goes, as if being burnt alive was not enough”. Incidentally, I wouldn’t use this precedent to call the next bishop you meet a mouse!

Finally, would you ever believe what “London Bridge is Falling Down” possibly alludes to? Of the many theories afloat, one is the belief “a bridge would collapse unless a human sacrifice was buried in its foundation.” For those who want to know, it’s called immurement.

Unfortunately, this article doesn’t relate the alleged origins of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”. I wonder what that might be? But the ease with which it has lent itself to Punjabi interpretation suggests it could be a lot closer to home.

Karan Thapar is the author of Devil’s Advocate: The Untold Story

The views expressed are personal

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  Karan Thapar

  Karan Thapar is a super-looking genius who’s young, friendly, chatty and great fun to be with. He’s also very enjoyable to read.

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