Question:

Why are some of these morbid songs our children still sing today still around?

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London Bridge is falling down? ....they all fall down! This was a terrible catastrophy where so many people lost their lives when the London Bridge collapsed.

Rock-a-bye-baby on the tree top? ....when the bough breaks ....down will come cradle, baby and all. What's up with that?

Ring around the rosie. Pockets full of Posies. Ashes, ashes, they all fall down? This was the Bubonic Plague!!! One of it's charactaristics is rosie colored bumps with a circle around them. They stuffed the pockets of the dead with Posies to help mask the stench as they stacked and burned the bodies. Periodically, as the bodies turned to ashes, the piles would collapse.

Why are these childrens' songs?

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  1. I read somewhere that lullabies are supposed to scare children so that they feel safer where they are. That sounded really weird to me but I think its a phycology thing that just kind of went along throughout history. Another one is All the Pretty Little Horses. They put that one in music boxes. It's really weird but that's only what I've read.


  2. i know i've thought the same thing! the truth is that the tunes are just catchy and they appeal to little children, and know one really knows that the songs are actually about, because no one bothers to think about it. "ashes, ashes we all fall down?" that line of the song is about people and homes being burned to the ground if they were thought to be infected by the plague lol

  3. They aren't  particularly morbid at all.

    I would gather that the this apparent conspiracy that all nursery rhymes are about sinister events or death has got to everyone.

    In fact, the first recorded reference of Ring a ring o' Roses being about the plague is found in 1951. Pre-war interpretations make no mention of the plague. Indeed, the rhyme was popularised the 1880s in the book Mother Goose by Kate Greenway. Where the plague theory falls truly flat is the claim that the song had appeared in New Bedford, Massachusetts, during the 1700s and used the following words;

    Ring a ring a Rosie,

    A bottle full of posie,

    All the girls in our town

    Ring for little Josie.

    Also, people suffering from Bubonic Plague do not burst into sneezing fits before death.

    There are many symptoms of Bubonic Plague of which sneezing is not one. Swollen lymph nodes, fever, aching joints, nausea and vomiting are the common symptoms.

    As for the London bridge song. There are a few theories as to it's origin. One being the difficulty of bridging the Thames in olden days, but is this not a similar sounding story? It's like the two guys who build their houses near the sea. One guy builds his house on the sand and it sinks the other builds his on rocks and it is solid as a.......well.....a rock. Perhaps the rhyme in its entirety shares a similar moral.

    I don't suppose the words mean a lot to children. They're just a bit of fun.

    I would think the most morbid aspect of nursery rhymes is that adults seem insistent on corrupting them and suggesting that kids shouldn't have the fun of singing and playing along.

  4. theese are all still songs for kids because when they were in childcare they get theese songs sung to them!

    they keep in their mind and they are quite catchy!

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