On nursery rhymes and morbidity

All of us have some discussions left incomplete, questions left unanswered that resurface every now and then. Untill you don't bring closure to these thoughts / questions, they come back to haunt you one way or another. One such question in my mind has been - why nursery rhymes have morbid undertones. A college mate and i had discussed this for the first time about 10 years ago. Last month it surfaced again on reading this post 'on struggling with poems language and culture' and then yet again when someone mused about why did the engine come and break piggies bones? I had to get to the bottom of this issue.

Those were never mean to be nursery rhymes in the first place

An excerpt from the secret history of nursery rhymes states that....

Many of the origins of the humble nursery rhyme reflect actual events in history! The secret meanings of the Nursery Rhyme have been lost in the passing of time. A nursery rhyme was often used to parody the royal and political events and people of the day. The humble Rhyme was used as a seemingly innocent vehicle to quickly spread subversive messages! A rhyme is often short and easy to remember and this was a critical element when many people were unable to read or write and a rhyme was verbally passed from generation to generation - it was also a vital element when commoners wanted to comment on the events of the day! It must be remembered that direct criticism or dissent would often have been punishable by death!

So while Jack (of the jack and jill fame) was Louis the XVI, jill who came tumbling after him was the queen Marie Antoinette and humpty-dumpty was not this over-weight cute thing we had imagined. Infact he was not even human, it was a cannon that protect a church in the city of colchester. And ring-a-ring of roses, made a reference to a deadly plague that gripped england in the 1300's that left a rosy red rash in the form of a ring, and killed many - which is why - they all fall down !

How rhymes of yore (and gore) become nursery rhymes....

After 200 or so years of narrating rhymes - people got a little weary of them. Their vocal chords needed rest. So around the middle of the 1500s, they started printing little booklets with these rhymes, also supported by cute illustrations. Thus we see the birth of comics - called Chapbooks.

Chapbook is "a small book or pamphlet containing poems, ballads, stories, or religious tracts". More people during this time were learning to read but the chapbooks were also popular with people who could not read as they contained pictures, in the printed form of crude wood engravings - A Middle Ages equivalent of a Children's comic!

Though it has not been mentioned explicitly, one can infer that, since these chapbooks were amongst the first forms of printed literature available, people learning how to read used these and would have probably set a precedent there in including these rhymes in any toddler's coursework. Besides these rhymes had some elements in their structure and language that made it easy for people to remember them - the alliteration in hickory dickory dock or phonetic words like baa baa in the one with the blacksheep - which could have aided their continued presence in the pre-school syllabus.

Why do children still recite these gruesome ballads?

One reason is that these rhymes have become sacred cows in their own right. Attempts at revising these rhymes have not met with much success - a) people believe that these rhymes have been part of our childhood for generations and revising them would be losing some of that legacy and b) that some sources state "that such rhymes allow children to imaginatively deal with violence and anger and revising them would mean that we are poorer as a society because of the lost opportunities to discuss obsolete values"

I don't completely agree with either - my mother and grandmother did not grow up reciting these rhymes. They had rhymes of their own and i'll come to that in a bit. So culturally it would be safe to assume that at the most 2 generations (mine and the one before) are familiar with these since our lineage does not take us back to 17th century England. And the second reason i partially agree with - yes these could act as starting points to stir up discussions on racial or religious hatred but i suppose 5 or 6 would not be the right age to broach such subjects...don't you agree? It would be more appropriate fodder for grown-up discussions.

Which brings me to reason # 3 - that its too tedious to change the syllabus (getting new books printed and all that) and where would we find new nursery rhymes for kids - so lets just conclude we are a lazy lot who'd rather have kids wondering why most of their nursery rhyme characters are falling, hurting and having their crowns and bones broken.

Did my mother sing Goosey Goosey Gander?

On one of my recent trips home, i heard my 3 yr old niece recite hindi rhymes (machli jal ki rani hai...jeevan uska paani hai and bandar mama...pehan pyjama) taught to her by my mother. Some I had heard before, some were new to me - but none of them were the text book rhymes i was familiar with. I did a quick search to see if i these rhymes were popular with others too or whether i could find more of them. I found a whole host of pages dedicated to them. Indian Nursery Rhymes has poems in many indian languages...thanks to which i heard yere yere pausa (marathi for - a child calling the rain). Karadi Rhymes has two cds full of indigenous compositions like 'my name is madhavi...I'm from allepey'. Hopefully we'll see more such inclusions to what kids are taught in kinder garden and we wont have an instance where some child asks his mother ' but mama why did they not pick up humpty dumpty when he fell down,' with the mama saying...'beta i don't have the answers to your questions...just learn it up or how will you do well in your school admission interview'

And here is a really cute one i found on this site

utho beta aankhein kholo
bister choro or moonh dholo
itna sona theek nahi hai
waqt ka khona theek nahi hai
sooraj nikla taare bhaage
dunya waale saare jaage
tum bhi utho bahir jao
achay waqt ka lutf uthao

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An excellent resource on the history of rhymes here and here

Nursery Rhymes,History of Nursery Rhymes,Indian Rhymes,

Crack

Mahino porane crack aaj phir nazar aane lage hain
Shayad cement achhe quality ka nahin tha
Chalo chodein in poorani baaton ko
Kyon na bazaar se aaj kuch naye rishtein le ayein?

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Cracks from the past have started resurfacing once again
Maybe we did not use a good quality sealant
No point trying to mend something so old
Why not go and get ourselves some new relationships today




PS - i always find it difficult when i think in one language to translate it to another. These were just 4 lines so i dared to attempt. suggestions on the hindi - english translation are welcome :)