Nursery Rhymes and Their Possible Dark Historic Origins

Here are some popular children’s nursery rhymes and their possible history.

Nursery rhymes were often written as a way of expressing something controversial in seemingly innocent children’s verse. There are numerous possible meanings and variants but here are just a few I have chosen which may spark debate.

(images by wiki)

 ‘Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water
Jack fell down and broke his crown
And Jill came tumbling after.
Up got Jack, and home did trot as fast as he could caper
He went to bed and bound his head
With vinegar and brown paper.’

The first publication of this rhyme was 1795.

One historical interpretation of the rhyme is that Jack is Louis XVI and Jill is Queen Marie Antoinette. Louis XVI was beheaded in 1793 during the Reign of Terror; hence the line ‘broke his crown’. The beheading of Queen Marie Antoinette followed after.  

Jack and Jill may have been a protest song against the taxes on liquid measures at the time of Charles I. The king ordered that a half pint known as a  ’Jack’ be reduced in volume but the tax would remain the same. Charles I gained more tax from the change in Weights and Measures Act despite parliamentary objection. A ‘Gill’, or a quarter of a pint also dropped in volume under the king. Hence the line ‘Gill came tumbling after.’

Another variation of interpretation of the rhyme is that liquid measures were watered down, requiring a ‘pail of water.’

‘Mary, Mary quite contrary
How does your garden grow,
With silver bells and cockle shells
And pretty maids all in a row.’

Mary may refer to Mary Queen of Scots who could certainly be described as contrary. The ‘silver bells’ could be those of the Catholic Church. Alternatively ‘silver bells and cockle shells’ could refer to instruments of torture. Another possibility is that ‘cockle shells’ refer to the shells worn by pilgrims. ‘Pretty maids in a row’ may refer to what were known as ‘Iron Maidens’ – the guillotine.

‘Ring a Ring O’ Roses,
A pocketful of posies,
Atishoo!  Atishoo!
We all fall down!’

Ring a  Ring O’ Roses is said to refer to the Great Plague. The first sign of the illness was red rings on the skin and sneezing. People believed that carrying ‘a pocket full of posies’  or herbs, would protect you from the disease.

‘Little Boy Blue come blow your horn,
The sheep’s in the meadow the cow’s in the corn.
But where’s the boy who looks after the sheep?
He’s under a haystack fast asleep.
Will you wake him? No, not I – for if I do, he’s sure to cry’

The real little boy blue may have been Cardinal Wolsey, now cardinal’s robes are scarlet, but Wolsey’s Arms displayed the heads of four blueleopards. He was a wealthy and arrogant Oxford Scholar and perhaps know for blowing his own trumpet i.e. boasting. He was called the ‘boy bachelor’ and there was much anti Wolsey propaganda  at the time. In 1529 his land was repossessed by Henry VIII and it became property of the crown. The line ‘where’s the man who looks after the sheep’ could be a sarcastic remark towards Wolsey implying he had more interest in looking after his own interests than those of the country.