On Sunday evening, my daughter Alex sat down next to me in my study with Neil Gaiman’s “M Is For Magic” in her hands. Apparently, a lot of nursery rhymes were referenced in the short stories and, not being familiar with many of them, she decided it was more convenient to ask me rather than turn on her MacBook, go online and search the web for answers.
The particular nursery rhyme that Alex was asking me about was “Sing A Song of Sixpence.” This is the version I used to sing as a child, at home as well as in school:
Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full of rye.
Four and twenty blackbirds,
Baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened,
The birds began to sing;
Wasn’t that a dainty dish,
To set before the king?
The king was in his counting house,
Counting out his money;
The queen was in the parlour,
Eating bread and honey.
The maid was in the garden,
Hanging out the clothes;
Along came a blackbird
And snipped off her nose.
The image of live blackbirds baked into a pie did not sound silly to me as a child (it seemed hilarious though) but, later, I thought about it and wondered how in Mother Goose’s name could birds stay alive for at least half an hour in an oven hot enough to bake a pie crust? Imagine my surprise when I found out that baking live birds into a pie was a common amusement in the 16th century and an Italian cookbook even has a recipe for it.
I grew up with nursery rhymes and a Mother Goose book dominated a huge part of my early childhood but it wasn’t a legacy that I handed down to my children. I enjoyed the catchy ditties, all right, but by the time I became a mother, I had very serious doubts about how age-proper they were. It’s different for Alex who is getting acquainted with nursery rhymes as a teenager. She can search for explanations and nuances and not be a victim of innocent acceptance.
But me? Oh, I loved the lullabies from my childhood. Brahms, naturally. Not the Celine Dion version, of course, but the old one that contained words I couldn’t even pronounce:
Lullaby, and good night,
With pink roses bedight,
With lilies o’erspread,
Is my baby’s sweet head.
Lay you down now, and rest,
May your slumber be blessed!
Lay you down now, and rest,
May thy slumber be blessed!
Bedight? O’erspread? Would a Filipino toddler know? Heck, I’m sure even my parents didn’t know. But Brahms wasn’t the only lullaby I was familiar with. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I also loved the traditional “Rock-A-Bye, Baby” lullaby. There are many variants to the lyrics but this is the one I grew up with:
Rock-a-bye, baby, on the treetop
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock
When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall
And down will come baby, cradle and all.
Heck, if that’s not gory, I don’t know how else to describe it. Why anyone would think it fitting to sing to a child, I have no idea.
The history of the verse and the theories behind it are interesting though. Some say it is based on Lillibullero, which put a satirical Irish ballad into music. Lillibullero is about the Williamite War in Ireland. In 1688, William II of England (also of Scotland and Ireland) was overthrown by his daughter and her husband William of Orange. The event came to be known as the Glorious Revolution. William tried to regain his three thrones and the opening salvo in this attempt became what is known as the Williamite War in Ireland.
In The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature (available at Questia for a minimal subscription fee), authors Humphrey Carpenter and Mari Prichard theorize that the baby is William II’s child (supposedly a changeling brought in to provide an heir to the House of Stuart), the cradle is the House of Stuart and the wind is the wind of political change.
In that context, one can understand the violent nature of Rock-A-Bye, Baby. But is it something to be sung to children who will grow up with an image of a baby falling off a tree? Strange, to say the least. I can’t imagine either a mother singing the lullaby to her baby then follow it up with an explanation of the historical event on which it was supposedly based. You know, for proper context.
That I grew up with Mother Goose and nursery rhymes is something I attribute to the generation that my parents belong to. My parents grew up during the post-war era, American-style public school education and all. I also had an aunt, my father’s eldest sister, who migrated to Canada when I was a baby and she sent home books and long playing records that she thought my brother and I would enjoy, including an album of lullabies and Mary Poppins.
Lucky for me, I also grew up with a grandmother next door who sang songs like Dandansoy to me. Not with the original Visayan lyrics but the English translation. Where she learned that from, I never bothered to ask. I can’t remember the words anymore but I still feel the soothing melody well to this day.
I’m all for reading the old fairy tales and nursery rhymes, they teach kids how to read, pronounce words properly, and foster imagination. Yes, many of them were gory and bloodthirsty, murder, rape, incest. I only see those now, but when I was a kid, the sense of urgency hoping Hansel and Gretel would escape, or wondering what would happen to the many princesses and princes fighting off ogres and dragons, they sure made my afternoons fly.
Believe it not, my father made me read the newspaper aloud to learn pronunciation.
And it’s great that, today, there are so many other alternatives to fairy tales and nursery rhymes. I especially love Roald Dahl. And Gaiman, of course. And Coelho. For the very young ones, well, my girls read Dr. Seuss.
my father did that to me too! “Louder please…” he says…
Hehehe worked, didn’t it?
yes! very effective…
i remember in one of my literature classes we learned that nursery rhymes were actually based on historical events–most of which dealt with death, so i guess that’s why they’re often disturbing.
There’s supposed to be a psycho-analyst angle to them. Like, they represent angst that must be let out or something.
there are so many versions of the nursery rhymes now~ tune wise.. i suppose the lyrics dont matter much, as the tunes or melodies are catchy and entertaining.
I’m not sure that lyrics don’t matter much as words and the images they invoke always have subliminal effect on the mind.
Dandansoy inom tuba laloy..
my sis said when am in London next week I must sing this to my `’mongrel” nephew he will start giggling.. but you know we are proud Visayans.
I read all Roald Dahl’s books a strong influence of my British teacher….
Ah that song brings back memories.
The original and popular version of Dandansoy was in Illongo with its own oiginal lyrics. But growing up in Cebu, we learned the Cebuano version:
Condansoy, inom tuba Laloy
Dili co moinom, tuba pait aslom
Ang tuba sa baybay patente mo angay
Talacsan nga diutay pono ang malaway.
he original and popular version of Dandansoy was in Illongo with its own oiginal lyrics. But growing up in Cebu, we learned the Cebuano version:
I never knew Dandansoy has an English version. I must look it up!
“Dandansoy, I must leave you today
To a land, so far far away…”
That’s all I can remember of this song. hehehe.
As for Humpty Dumpty:
“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
All the kings’ horses and all the kings’ men
Cannot put Humpty Dumpty together again.”
And my first born, then five years old, kept asking if Humpty Dumpty was still alive. LOL!
reading your post made me smile while singing those nursery rhymes in my head… =) it brings back memories indeed and its the same nursery rhymes i sang to my eldest son and its still the same now with my 2 months son. “someday we’ll be gone but lullabyes go on and on, they never die…”
“dandansoy inum tuba laloy
di ko inom tuba
tuba pait aslom…”
i’m not sure if this is correct but eto yung kinalakihan ko na lyrics. hehehe…
buti nalang yung mga uyayi natin e walang ganyang hidden meaning
…neneng ko, wag kang magagalit
sabay-sabay tayong pupunta sa bukid
sa bukid na kay ganda
ang bulaklak magaganda…
di ko na alam ang kasunod. ewan ko lang kung alam nyo yang kanta na ‘yan
pero kung sa nursery rhymes e subtle ang meaning ng violence, sa mga matatanda natin e harapan ang pananakot sa mga bata.
… wag kang magpapayong sa loob ng bahay, babagsakan ka ng mga alakdan
… wag kang magkakasugat pag mahal na araw dahil hindi gagaling hanggang sa susunod na taon
… pag nasugatan ang bata sasabihin lalabas ang kanin
… may mga nananakot sa mga bata tungkol sa “mamaw”
… kukunin ka ng bumbay
hahaha, sabi nga ni bob ong, aatakihin sa puso ang mga modern child psychologist sa mga pananakot ng mga matatanda noon.
heheh totally true, when I was young all that you’ve mentioned were the threats we receive and it is still effective til now LOL!
Pananakot – ginagawa pa rin yan even with everyday language. YUng mga matatanda dito, naniniwala pa sa nuno sa punso.
“I can’t imagine a mother singing the lullaby to her baby then follow it up with an explanation of the historical event…” – LOL!
I think the idea was that the overt meaning would be taught to the children and the covert meaning would be revealed to them as adults – thereby assuring that the “history lesson” would *never* be forgotten. You still remember the words!
But there is another aspect to the motive here, perhaps the main one (the other perhaps being a useful side-effect)… Many of these nursery rhymes are political in nature, and many contain elements of gnosticism, illuminism or other “heresies” such as progressive humanism – these were punishable by death (in the eyes of Church and King). In this sense, many nursery rhymes function just like hermetic allegories.
From what I read, your observation that nursery rhymes are an oblique way to criticize governments seem to be the real deal. Of course, lots of scholars debate over the meanings but that’s a pretty logical way to interpret them if the time frame is considered.
I can’t still recite most nursery rhymes by heart. Weird, really, but I suppose there are things one never forgets.
I was always taught that the Rock-a-bye Baby tune was to teach new mothers working in the field to be careful where they hang their babies while doing their job. The wind would blow their babies gently to sleep while they picked/gathering/whatever but make sure to hang them on a strong branch or they will fall.
Sure beats the meaning behind Ring-Around-a-Rosie!
yeah ring around a rosie has the sickest meaning out of all the nursery rhymes… ( i think…)
I read somewhere that its association with the plague all wrong or something because of the time frame, I think.
i do remember my microbiology instructor referencing Ring-Around-A-Rosie to the Black Death plague in Europe…’ashes, ashes we all fall down.’ hindi ba nga, daming namatay, and burning was a means of decontamination. but, as children, how we loved to sing and act out that song!
Little did we know, eh?
This is an interesting book on nursery rhymes.
http://www.amazon.com/Heavy-Words-Lightly-Thrown-Reason/dp/B001G8WV8Y/ref=sr_1_42?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259000198&sr=8-42
I have also heard that You are my Sunshine is about child abduction.
You have to remember Ms Connie that 300 , 400 500 years ago and even as recently as 70 years ago , death , pestilence , famine and war etc were common everyday events . So what to us seems bloodthirsty was something that people of all classes dealt with daily . For the common people these rhymes were also a way , albeit cryptic , to make comments on the political situation of the day with out running a foul of the law as dictated by the ruler under whom you lived . Some of my ancestors learnt that the hard way. they follwed a gentleman called The Duke of Monmouth , the kings cousin , who decided he wanted the throne of England . Sadly for them he switched sides , and along with many of their compatriots were hanged for treason . The duke of course got away scot free . lol .
“even as recently as 70 years ago , death , pestilence , famine and war etc were common everyday”
In the Philippines, they still are common occurrences. People die everyday from malnutrition, lack of affordable medical care, and the war in Mindanao is as it has always been. We just don’t hear about them very often as media love to act as though the only things worth reporting are things that happen in Metro Manila.
Exactly , sad indictment of our modern world wouldn’t you say Ms Connie?
Yes, and often I don’t know if it’s really “sad” or just inevitable.
Nursery Rhymes were originally created to get kids to behaive and since they could not speak freely they would make nursery rhymes. Not only that but Rock A By Baby was either practiced by Native Americans or a Euripean saw a NA doing so, and did so to there child. They would put the cradle in the tree and when the wind would blow then the cradle would rock the baby to sleep but sometimes the wind was to strong or the branch was weak and when the wind blew the branch would break and the baby and cradle would fall though they wouldn’t die unless they fell off a cliff