if you think about it almost every nursery rhyme that you heard as a kid had something or someone that was hurt or starving or unhappy. like old mother hubbard, mary mary quite contrary, and the old lady who lived in a shoe. jack and jill, mother goose. why do they all seem like that now but we never noticed as kids when we first heard them?
More Information:
Children used to live in a world full of death and pain. The average life expectancy was 35 at some point. They did not have vaccines, and state of the art hospitals. So with all of this going on, the nursery rhymes were about what was going on around them.
It’s a way to warn kids of the dangers of the world, in a way they will not forget as easy. For instance, all around the mulberry bush was about kids catching the mumps.
Hello Hanna :
These nursery rhymes are making the effort to teach kids lessons about life and the possible consequences of each moment of every day.
There’s a different version of "The Old Woman Who Lived In A Shoe" :- She had so many children … It fell off !
i would have to think that the worst is
Ring around the rosie, a rosie is a dead person
A pocket full of posies, the people would have posies to nullify the smell of the corpses
Ashes! Ashes! ashes represent the black death from europe
We all fall down! We all die from it.
this one does not teach a lesson i think and just decribes an epidemic and death.
Many years ago, a great many children died before adult hood. Funny thing is these nursery rhymes were to teach the kids and parents about the illness and safety.
Ring around the Rose.. The pplagueyou have to burn the infected to kill the infection off.
The mind was ssimplerway back then.
A lot of mis-information here. wikipedia has a good article about the origins of Nursery Rhymes