4/27/2005 6:00:00 PM VICKERS / Why tamper with nursery rhymes?
By OVID VICKERS
Commentary
I am tired of pseudo-intellectuals, questionable scholars and sensation seeking literary critics attempting to read things into pieces of literature which are just not there. Tampering with the written word now extends all the way from the Bible (The Da Vinci Code) to nursery rhymes.
I fell in love with nursery rhymes when I was a small child, and even today I play a game with my grandchildren which we call “How Many Rhymes Do You Know?” Each player must say a nursery rhyme until one of use cannot think of another rhyme, then we are “out.”
We are now told in a new book titled “Heavy Words Spoken Lightly” that Jack and Jill seem innocent enough, but they might have become amorous as they climbed that hill to fetch a pail of water.
Chris Roberts, the book’s author, contends that the line “Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after” is simply a cryptic way of telling the reader that his “crown” does not refer to Jack’s head but means that Jack is no longer an inexperienced lad.
It has long been known that nursery rhymes might be connected with some historical or social event. The rhyme “Rock a by baby in the tree top; When the wind blows, the cradle will rock; When the bough breaks the cradle will fall; Down will come baby, cradle and all” is thought to be about the reign of the English King James II.
When James II’s son was born, it was said that the child was doomed to “fall” and would never rule England because of the support his father had given to the Catholic Church.
Author Roberts believes that the rhyme “Goosey, goosey gander, where do you wander? / Upstairs, downstairs and in my lady’s chamber” is about prostitution. He also theorizes that the rhyme speaks of the spread of social diseases.
It is true that prostitutes were referred to as “geese” in the 18th century, and social diseases were spoken of as “goose bumps” because of the swellings they caused. Be that as it may, it seems to be stretching a point to read these interpretations into a nursery rhyme.
“Oranges and Lemons” is referred to in Roberts’ book as a vulgar wedding song. According to Roberts, “Here comes a candle to light you in bed” refers to a bride tempting the bridegroom. “Here comes a chopper to chop off your head” is to be read as an indication that the bride, after the wedding night, will no longer be a pure and innocent girl.
We are all familiar with the words of “Mary, Mary quite contrary” which say, “Mary, Mary quite contrary, how does your garden grow? With cockle shells and tinkle bells and pretty maidens all in a row.” Roberts thinks “cockles” refers to cuckolds (unfaithful women or wives) in the promiscuous court of Mary Queen of Scots, who ruled in the mid-1500s.
Throughout history, parodies or alternate verses have been written to all manner of verse all the way from Shakespeare’s sonnets to “Casey Jones.” Roberts often refers to these alternate versions of nursery rhymes in an attempt to prove his point.
An example is an alternate version of “See Saw Marjorie Daw” in the most vulgar terms and says that “she decided to sell her bed and lie on straw.”
No one can deny the fact that some rhymes were, and are, clearly created for adults. These rhymes, I do believe, were never intended for the ears of children.
If one looks carefully at the mother goose rhymes which have been around since 1697, it should be clear that these verses were deliberately created as a simple way to tell children a story or give them information.
There are some things I will never believe and I do not think my refusal to accept these ideas means that I am a rube or narrow minded. I do not, and never will, believe that nursery rhymes which have delighted children for eons were written to titillate adults with hidden meanings.
It is not only nursery rhymes which fall prey to misinterpretation. In the field of more serious literature, I do not believe, regardless of what some recognized critics contend, that the author F. Scott Fitzgerald draws a parallel between his character Jay Gatsby and Jesus Christ in his novel “The Great Gatsby.”
Just because Gatsby is killed while floating on an air mattress in his pool with his arms outstretched and his legs crossed at the ankle is not sufficient evidence to make the assertion that Fitzgerald has Christ in mind.
I know that proper literary criticism can be helpful in giving students and even casual readers a greater insight into what a writer’s intentions were. On the other hand, nursery rhymes that were written for children more than 300 years ago need to be read for what they are: little verses to delight the mind of a child.
