Ovi Magazine Issue #12: Sexuality Published: 01-03-2006

fArt
Hey Diddle Diddle
By Asa Butcher
No recognisable words have escaped the lips of my seven-month-old daughter as of yet, but she is experimenting with an assortment of
noises that make Mummy and Daddy giddy with parental excitement. We have realised that the near future will bring us face to face with
our own childhood as we start reciting nursery rhymes with which we grew up.
Nursery rhymes are believed to aid the
development of vocabulary and counting
skills, while specific actions and dances
associated with particular songs develop
coordination and memory. Therefore, my
wife is teaching Finnish songs from her
own childhood, which has left the English
classics to me and I can’t remember more
than a couple for the life of me.
Let me see… Rub a dub dub, Humpty
Dumpty had a little lamb and Little Bo
Peep has lost her sheep, the cow jumped
over the moon and the mouse ran up the
clock. London Bridge is falling down and
Jill came tumbling after, Old Mother Hubbard
and Old King Cole were merry old
souls, out came the sun and dried up the
ten thousand men, but how many were
going to St Ives?
My guess is that I need some practice
separating Little Miss Muffet from Simple
Simon, but so long as my daughter holds
off the verbal there is plenty of time to
learn the knick-knack, paddy whacks with
the help of the Bumper Book of Nursery
Rhymes. Upon first flicking through the
pages, nostalgia overwhelmed my senses
and I could picture days at playschool
chanting them repeatedly.
After a closer inspection, I discovered
many to be completely nonsensical. For
example, one of favourite nursery rhymes
as a kid was ‘Rub a dub dub’ because it
featured my surname, but reading it now
made me exclaim words that my daughter
should not be learning:
Rub-a-dub-dub,
Three men in a tub,
And how do you think they got there?
The butcher, the baker,
The candlestick-maker,
They all jumped out of a rotten potato,
‘Twas enough to make a man stare.
‘They all jumped out of a rotten potato’,
excuse me? When I read that for the first
time to her, she will pounce on my hesitation
with the nimbleness of Jack jumping
over the candlestick. What can I say
to ease her inquisitiveness? Why can’t I
remember my parents reading that part to
me? Maybe they had no answer either, so
used an alternative version.
A quick Google search revealed that the
so-called origin is based upon poking fun
at men who used to enjoy watching three
naked maidens in a tub at an old sideshow
attraction in local fairs. In fact, many of the
famous nursery rhymes seem to poke fun
at many historical figures. Did you know
that it is believed that ‘Hey Diddle Diddle’
is based upon a sex scandal in the court of
Queen Elizabeth I?
‘Georgie Porgie, Puddin’ and Pie’ is
thought to originate either from the madness
of King George III or the womanising
George IV. ‘Goosey Goosey Gander’
refers to Oliver Cromwell and his Roundheads,
‘ Little Miss Muffet’ is claimed to
refers to Mary, Queen of Scots, who was
said to have been frightened by John
Knox, a Scottish religious reformer in the
16th century. Urban legend or truth is in
the eye of the etymologist.
I had always thought that ‘Ring-a-ring of
Rosies’ is a reference to the Great Plague,
but it was with shock I discovered that this
has been widely discredited. Apparently,
none of the “symptoms” described by the
poem even remotely correlate to those of
the Bubonic plague, and the first record of
the rhyme’s existence was not until 1881.
Oh well.
It is time to put aside all this history research
and begin to concentrate on bringing
the words of dozens of nursery rhymes
back to the surface of my memory. I think
I’ll start with an easy one, like ‘Itsy Bitsy
Spider’…doesn’t that one have some actions
to learn too? Damn!