We've all grown up listening to nursery rhymes. Some of us actually remember all of the lyrics! But we sing creepy nursery rhymes to children, sometimes without realising it. So here's a list of creepy rhymes.
Creepy Rhyme #1: Rock-a-bye Baby
Lyrics: Rock a bye, Baby
In the treetop,
When the wind blows the
Cradle will rock
When the bow breaks
The cradle will fall
And down will come baby,
Cradle and all
Creepy Factor: Read the lyrics again. First, the baby's in A TREE. So, we start a song off with some neglectful parents. And then the cradle falls from the tree, with the baby. Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention this song's about SIDS. Pleasant.
Creepy Rhyme #2: You Are My Sunshine
Lyrics: The other night, dear
As I lay sleeping
I dreamt I held you in my arms
But when I awoke dear,
I was mistaken
And I hung my head and cried
You are my sunshine,
My only sunshine,
You make me happy
When skies are gray
You'll never know, dear
How much I love you
Please don't take my
Sunshine away
Creepy Factor: It sounds like a mother was dreaming she was holding her baby, but when she woke up she was mistaken, and cried. So then the second verse says, "You'll never know dear/how much I love you/Please don't take my sunshine away/". Another song about SIDS. Why do we sing these to children?
Creepy Nursery Rhyme #3: I Had A Little Bird
Lyrics: I had a little bird
His name was Enza
I opened the window
And In Flew Enza
Creepy Factor: Originally written in 1918 about the Spanish Flu. Take a look at the line, And in flew Enza. Say it out loud. Then again. Now you get it.
Creepy Nursery Rhyme #4: Ring Around the Roses
Lyrics: Ring around the rosies
Pockets full of posies
Ashes, ashes,
We all fall down
Creepy Factor: It's about plague. "Ring around the rosies" refer to the round, red rash that was one of the first symptoms of the Black Plague. "Pockets full of posies" refer to how people would place flowers around infected people, or to mask the smell of death. "Ashes, ashes" is a variation of the sound sneezing makes; sneezing was also a symptom of The Plague. "We all fall down" is a reference to the many dead. And we sang this as children.
Creepy Nursery Rhyme #5: There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly
Lyrics: There was an old lady who
Swallowed a fly
I dunno why
She swallowed a fly
Perhaps she'll die...
Creepy Factor: The unnamed lady swallows more and more things to get the things that supposed to get the fly. She dies in the end. A message about suicide, maybe?
Creepy Nursery Rhyme #6: London Bridge Is Falling Down
Lyrics: London Bridge is falling down
falling down, falling down
London Bridge is falling down
My fair lady
Take the key and lock her up,
lock her up, lock her up
Take the key and lock her up
My fair lady
Creepy Factor: Oh, noes! It looks like the bridge is falling! I know what we should do: let's take a 9-15 year old child and lock 'em in the bridge for good luck! No, seriously. Back in the day, people would take children and cement them into bridges for good luck because they believed the only way to keep a bridge up is by offering a child as a sacrifice to the gods. Historians say there was once a time where the bricks of London Bridge was bespattered with the blood of little children. Yikes! Historians also say that in the Great Wall of China, they found over 100,000 little childrens bodies buried within. D:
There was a teen who posted some rhymes
She posted the rhymes to send a message
I dunno why she posted the rhymes
They're kinda creepy.
And we sing 'em to children. Pleasant dreams!
Cheese Face out.
The ashes part of ring around the rosie is wrong. They say ashes not because of the sneezing but because they usually burned the corpses of those that died of the plague
ReplyDeleteAh! Thank you for correcting me. I said the part about sneezing because that's what my research said. I did see things about burning the corpses, as well as sneezing, and the number of times each came up in a website were about equal so I just picked one and ran with it.
DeleteActually the earliest version of "Ring around the Rosie" that has been documented is from 1790, almost 100 years later than the great epidemies of the bubonic plague. Also this version and has very different lyrics.
ReplyDeleteRingel Ringel Reihe Ring Ring Row
Sind wir Kinder dreie There are three of us children
Sitzen unterm Hollerbusch Sit under the elder bush
Machen alle (We) all say (lit. "do")
Husch Husch Husch! Shoo Shoo Shoo!
So you see it doesnt have that much to do with the plague. The english version you quoted is from 1830 if Im not mistaken.
About the "ashes": In some versions (mostly in England) the say "Atishoo" instead of "ashes", so the "ashes" part might be a malapropism of that version. It should be noted that sneezing is _not_ a symptom of the bubonic plague.
Also there is a theory that Rock a bye baby is actually about childbirth (The "rocking" being the labour pains and so on).
It might also be about the practice of some groups Native Americans to put their babies cradles in the tree top of birches, so the wind would rock them. even if the bark broke and the baby fell, it would be save in the cradle. Which theory is correct is not certain.
But yeah... in the end we should really think about which songs we sing to our children. Manyof them are ceepy even if you dont know the background.^^