We were given a whole bunch of kids books the other day and the boys were so excited as they love story time and what’s better than a whole pile of new books to get mummy to read! So I picked up the one on the top of the pile which was called Chicken Licken and started to read it. Let this be a lesson to all!
Do not read a story to your children without having read it first!
For those who don’t know the story, Chicken Licken has an acorn fall on his head so decides he must go and find the Queen to tell her the sky is falling. Along the way he meets up with Henny Penny, Cocky Locky, Ducky Daddles, Drakey Lakey, Goosey Loosey, Gander Lander, Turkey Lurkey and Foxy Woxy. They all decide to tag along with Chicken Licken to tell the Queen the sky is falling. Which is great. Who doesn’t need friends right? But Foxy Woxy leads them into his dark lair and then he turns around and bites off Henny Penny’s head (I believe the words used in the book were ‘SNAP, he bites off her head!’) then Cocky Locky and all the birds in turn until only Chicken Licken remains and he runs away and never gets to tell the Queen the sky is falling.
Now, it’s interesting to note that there are different versions of this story and we just happened to get the version that painted the picture in a particularly callous way which is fine I guess, except that we had a chicken who lived across the road in the front yard and the boys became very attached to watching her out their bedroom window. This chicken literally lived in the front yard and didn’t have an owner so would hang out on the road, narrowly avoiding death on a daily basis. It was an emotional rollercoaster every time you would look out the window as this stupid chicken would just be back and forth on the road with no regard for it’s safety.
It gave a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘Why did the chicken cross the road?’.
It got to the point my husband would sometimes run onto the road to usher it off back into the safety of the Pohutakawa tree it would sleep in, but of course 2 minutes later she’d be back in the middle of the road!
It all came to a head on Christmas day when we were standing on our back deck which overlooks the road from the side and we see the stupid chicken about to be run over by a truck so we all were just a bit ‘Oh no, this is it!’ but of course this chicken had a million lives and survived the ordeal. However 20 second later we see our 4 year old son charging into the middle of the road to chase the STUPID chicken off the road (notice the chicken gets stupider as the story goes on). Needless to say, we dragged him back inside and gave him a stern talking to about his life being far more precious than the life of a really stupid chicken with a death wish and straight away put a top latch on the door because clearly he had no issue unlocking it himself!
The next day we caught that damn chicken (with a fishing net no less, was great entertainment for the neighbours!) and she’s gone to live at my step-dads house with his 2 ducks, 2 other chickens and 2 Flemish Giant rabbits. Last I heard she was enjoying life sleeping 4 metres up the neighbours peach tree but coming home for dinner time and hanging out with the ducks (she doesn’t like other chickens which is probably why she was all alone in a random front yard in suburbia).
We also had two ‘pet’ ducks who would come to our house daily to be fed and the highlight of their little lives (my children, not the ducks) was leaving our house one morning to see two big roosters walking up the steps to our neighbours house to their front door (I have no explanation for this, one of the most random things I have ever seen!).
The point to all this is that my children have a very loving affiliation to chickens, ducks and roosters and were therefore mightily distraught that foxy woxy the ‘friendly’ fox had bitten off their heads and killed them.
Bad mummy.
The tale of Chicken Licken actually goes all the way back to a folk tale told in the early 1800’s and has since been published in many different versions with slightly different endings. Sometimes the fox only kills Chicken Licken, sometimes all, sometimes he bites off their heads, sometimes he eats them, sometimes the fox’s children eat them and sometimes they all escape and live happily ever after. Given it is a folk tale, there are of course meaning behind the story. Where there is a ‘happy ending’ the moral is not to be a ‘Chicken’ but to have courage. In the other versions where the birds are eaten by the fox (or having their heads bitten off!) the fable is interpreted as a warning not to believe everything one is told.
The traumatic experience of reading this book (ha!) got me thinking about the morbidity of so many of the kids classic nursery rhymes. I never gave them too much thought as a child when as little girls we would link arms and dance around in a circle singing Ring around the rosy. But as an adult singing them to my own babies, it suddenly occurred to me that these words are not actually that pretty, though the rhyme itself is sung as sweet as a lullaby! If you would like to hang onto the illuisions you have of these sweet old rhymes then stop reading here because I am about to smash them to pieces! But think about it, are the words really that pleasant?
Here are 6 Nursery Rhymes and the bizarre and morbid meanings behind them!
HUMPTY DUMPTY
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.
Humpty is portrayed as a large egg, often dressed as a little boy who falls of a big wall and breaks into a thousand pieces and can’t be put back together! That’s not very nice! Apparently the real story behind this nursery rhyme though is that Humpty was a huge canon atop a huge wall that was hit by enemy canon fire and fell down and could not be fixed. How the canon became an egg I have no idea!
RING AROUND THE ROSY
Ring around the rosy
A pocketful of posies
“Ashes, Ashes”
We all fall down!
Hands up who sang this one as a little girl, holding hands and swinging around in a circle before falling to the ground amid a sea of giggles?
This rhyme dates back to the Great Plague of London in 1665. The symptoms of bubonic plague included a rosy red ring-shaped rash, which was what inspired the first line of the rhyme. It was believed that the disease was carried by bad smells, so people frequently carried pockets full of fresh herbs, or ‘posies’ to counteract that. The ‘ashes, ashes’ line is believed to refer to the cremation of the bodies of those who died from the plague of which there were millions (the plague killed 75-200 million people between 1346 and 1353).
So that sweet song you used to sing? Yeah, not so sweet after all!
ROCK-A-BYE, BABY
Rock-a-bye, baby,
In the tree top.
When the wind blows,
The cradle will rock.
When the bough breaks,
The cradle will fall,
And down will come baby,
Cradle and all.
Yep, so the baby is asleep in a cradle hanging from a tree and the wind blows the cradle falls out of the tree with the baby in it. Yep, so comforting that one!
PETER, PETER, PUMPKIN-EATER
Peter, Peter, pumpkin-eater,
Had a wife and couldn’t keep her;
He put her in a pumpkin shell,
And there he kept her very well.
So pretty much Peter had a wife who was a prostitute. Since he couldn’t keep her from having sexual affairs with other men, he decided to kill her and he hid her body in an absurdly large pumpkin.
JACK AND JILL
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.
What is it with nursery rhymes and people getting hurt? No one quite knows the meaning behind this one though there are a few theories of a French King being beheaded while their Queen came tumbling (was beheaded) afterwards or the story of an affair between ‘Jack’ and ‘Jill’ in some small English town in 1697 and after the sordid affair Jill gets pregnant and Jack falls down a hill caving his skull in on a rock and Jill dies in childbirth. Moral of the story? Don’t have an affair.
MARY MARY QUITE CONTRARY
Mary Mary quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockle shells
And pretty maids all in a row.
Do you think this one is about pretty flowers growing in a garden? Think again! This is actually about Queen Mary I – ‘silver bells’, ‘cockle shells’, and ‘maids’ are actually all just instruments of torture and death. Silver bells are thumbscrews; cockleshells were attached to the genitals (ouch!) and ‘maids’ was actually a device called The Maiden used to behead people! The ‘garden’ refers to the increasing number of cemeteries popping up to bury all the protestants she was murdering using these torture methods. Shall we all sing this one together now? On the count of 3 …
Have you read Chicken Licken to your children? Were you aware of the meanings behind these seemingly innocent nursery rhymes?
Linking up with #IBOT @ Essentially Jess
Poor chicken licken
I avoided nursery rhymes when the kids were little. For all those reasons. Mind you, I had them recited to me over and over when I was a kid and they completely went over my head. No harm no foul (excuse the pun)
Leanne @ Deep Fried Fruit recently posted…Day 2286 – Bell’s Carnival Batehaven, Bateman’s Bay NSW
I never really thought too much about it until I had my own babies. I find it more fascinating than anything!
I remember going through some of these rhymes when my kids were little and actually listening to the words. I was shocked too. When I grew up we just said them, never understanding anything about them. Very creepy really.
Natalie @ Our Parallel Connection recently posted…I have a bad habit and I’m not proud of it
Funny how you don’t think about it until later. As a kid you’re just too innocent to take any notice and really, ones like Mary Mary and Ring around the Rosy are not noticeably morbid until you know the meaning behind them!
Haha!!! I knew about ring a rosy but the Peter Pumpkin eater is news to me and rather hilarious 😂😂
I know right! I had no idea on some of these until I researched them for this post! Can you imagine how big the pumpkin would have had to be?!
Argh! Why are we reading about these awful things and why do nursery rhymes make them sound like something pretty when they’re really not. It’s all fascinating though. I lived in Colchester in the UK for a while and was told Humpty Dumpty was written about a canon on Colchester’s great wall. (It’s the oldest British town in Roman History) and twinkle twinkle also originated in Colchester. So interesting. Poor chicken licken and your poor boys 🙁
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Yep, that sounds about right with Humpty Renee! Random huh!
Nursery rhymes and Brothers Grimm stories- not suitable for children at all! Loved the chicken stories by the way 🙂
Amy @ Handbagmafia recently posted…‘According to Yes’, by Dawn French: A Review
The bloody chicken! We visited her on the weekend and my dads ducks have had ‘ducklings’ which are now as big as damn geese and like geese, they waddle along together and there’s the damn chicken waddling along with them thinking he’s a duck and the other two chickens watching on in disgust. Haha.
I loved Chicken Licken – I also loved the Little Match Girl and the Little Mermaid (and I HATE what Disney did to it – the whole point was she changed herself for a guy who didn’t know or care she existed, and then when she dies he happily strolls off into the sunset with another chick). I kind of think we’ve gone a bit nutty on the happily ever after….I also thought Humpty Dumpty was one of the kings who was a little war crazy…can’t remember which one tho….
I think Chicken Licken would have been fine without the ‘pet’ chicken and ducks which made the story too close to home! Haha. I didn’t know that about The Little Mermaid, interesting!
Scary, scary stuff. I remember reading about nursery rhymes a long time ago, and there was lots of history behind them. And also lots of gory horror stories too. Maybe that’s why you don’t hear many nursery rhymes sung anymore. It’s too terrifying!
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I got given quite a few beautifully illustrated nursery rhyme books when the boys were babies. It’s crazy how many hidden meanings they have. 3 Blind Mice is another one to do with murder!
Some of these I was aware of but Mary Mary Quite Contrary I thought was one of the few innocent nursery rhymes! Obviously not! Now I know better!
I know! Mary, Mary seemed like such an innocent rhyme didn’t it! But it’s the worst of the lot! Who knew!
Goodness! I haven’t read that version of Chicken Licken before!
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What happens in your version Rebecca?
They are terrible aren’t they?
I remember being haunted by Doctor Foster when I was a kid.
Doctor Foster went to Gloucester in a shower of rain
He stepped in a puddle
Right up to his middle
And was never seen again.
That’s tragic even without any hidden meaning!
Interestingly too, I’ve always sung Ring a Rosie with ‘a tissue, a tissue we all fall down.’
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Now that you mention it Jess, so did I! Did the plague cause people to sneeze too? I’ve never heard the Doctor Foster one before, it would scare kids out of jumping in puddles!
I always thought the last line was ‘And never went there again’. Is mine the sanitised version?! This is blowing my mind!
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Three blind mice, three blind mice … oh yes, I have often wondered how I made it through childhood unscathed when there was pain, torture and detailitation of mice around every corner! I knew all of those stories except Mary Mary. She is quite contrary! Seems so sweet and innocent, and then POW! Torture. Great post. x
It’s actually pain and torture of noblemen at the hand of Queen Mary I but you didn’t need to have it tainted further … oops, sorry! No pain and torture, just burning them at the stake. You know, same old. Why did they write rhymes about this shit?!
Yep, nursery rhymes and fairy tales really aren’t as nice as they seem! My mother used to sing three blind mice to my girl but we decided to change the words rather than sing about mice getting their tales cut off :-/
lu @ looking for mama me recently posted…Travelling? Spare a thought for your parents
The three blind mice were actually noblemen who were burnt at the stake by Queen Mary I for adhering to the Protestant faith!
Nursery rhymes are pretty brutal when you learn the hidden meaning! Like Jess we used to sing ‘a tissue, a tissue’ for Ring a Rosy too and I was told that having a cold was the last symptom before you died of the plague. Also a little side tidbit, the saying ‘saved by the bell’ came from the times of the plague. Apparently sometimes they accidentally buried people that were actually in comas and so they would put a long piece of string into the grave that was attached to a bell. A family member would sit beside the grave (which was where graveyard shift come from) and listen for the bell.
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Oh wow, I didn’t know that Tegan, that is some crazy shit! I’ll have to google more about that, that’s super fascinating! Morbid AND fascinating.
Yep! I’m steering well clear of a lot of ‘classic’ stories and the rock a bye baby rhyme just freaks me out 🙂
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Good idea Emma!
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Our family, now grown kids, have discussed the morbidity of nursery rhymes and the real tales – before Disney – and it is quite interesting. Don’t forget ‘Rock A Bye Baby’. Yikes, the kid falling from the tree….hhhmmm.
Well, Disney takes it the other way but at the same time do you notice all kids shows have villains? I’ve never got that!
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Thank you for an enlightening and very entertaining post. I knew some of the backgrounds, but Peter Peter completely floored me. Who knew, right? I think death was such a constant part of life back in the days these were written it must have been natural to sing about it. I know Chicken Licken as Chicken Little. I totally forgot about the fox! Wow! And to think you have your own reckless chicken is just fantastic. Except the part about your boy getting outside. Glad you caught him! Awesome post. I hope I get to read more in the future. Liking on Facebook.😀 #WAYWOW
I know! I never knew the history of Peter Peter until I researched for this post! That must have been some pumpkin!
Haidee recently posted…Why I Have To Quit The Booze
LOL there must be something in the air! You, me and Mandy at Barbie, Bieber and Beyond have all been ruminating on a similar theme. I still remember the first time I discovered the meaning behind Ring a Rosie. Woah. It blew my mind. Imagine kids actually singing that when those things were raw!
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I know, to us it was such an innocent rhyme and fun to sing and dance and fall down! I’ll have to go and read her post too.
I always thought that Rock a bye Baby was a bit morbid – I just don’t get why you’d sing a song about a baby falling out of a tree to your child (and what was it doing up in a tree anyway???) We certainly live more sheltered lives now than they did back in the “good” old days!
Leanne@crestingthehill recently posted…walking together at the same pace
Leanne, I agree! I always thought it was a little bit odd and then when I had kids I realised just how odd! At least Twinkle little star is innocent enough! There’s probably some crazy story behind that too! Haha.
Haidee recently posted…Why I Have To Quit The Booze
haha nooo! childhood ruined! who has a random chicken in their road! that’s both amazingly cool and very strange :p we just have dogs and cats in our neighbourhood! great post cx
Sorry, sorry! Haha. I know right, stupid chicken! This morning it was a duck in the road!
Haidee recently posted…Why I Have To Quit The Booze
Oh my goodness! I actually did think as we sang along to ‘Jack and Jill’ in our sing and sign class last week that the words were a bit odd, it obviously never crossed my mind when I was little! We sing humpty dumpty too, I didn’t realise the meaning of any of them! I think i’ll steer clear of Chicken Licken! I’m glad your chicken has a safe new home 🙂 x
Thanks Rebecca! The chicken thinks she’s a duck but she’s happy at least!
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Isn’t it funny how we never thought about these lyrics until we started singing/reading them to our kids? I was walking through the grocery store one day singing a song popular when I was in school that was playing in the store, and my daughter looked at me and said, “Mama, what ARE you singing about??” It was only then that I realized just exactly what I had just said! oops! As for “Rock a bye, Baby,” we changed those words to “…and God will protect you, baby and all!” Interesting post!
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Hahaha! What was the song? You have to share that now!
I never really put a lot of thought into the words of the nursery rhymes, just the sing-songy cadence of them. This is really creepy, and kinda funny. Not laughing at the horrendous outcome of the chickens and other animals in Chicken Little, that had to be really horrid for your kids! I had heard about the creepiness of fairy tales, such as the step-sisters in Cinderella cutting off their toes to fit in the glass slipper. Our ancestors had a really weird sense of humor????!!!!
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Totally weird but I guess they didn’t have blogs to write on so they just made up morbid tunes instead! Haha.
Hold on, I just read that again! They cut off their toes?!!! How have I never noted that part of the story before?!
Wow, this is seriously crazy. I knew about Ring Around The Rosie, but I can’t say I knew or even really realized how creepy the others are. Good thing my daughter loves Twinkle twinkle. I don’t think there’s a morbid story behind that one. ;P
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No, I think that’s about the only one that doesn’t Lindsey!
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When you say, “Do not tell a story to the children without reading it first.”, I totally agree with this! I had a funny experience of this one and it really feels awkward. LOL
Ooooh, what was the story?! Just so I know not to read it! Haha.
I knew some nursery rhymes had other meanings but was not aware of all of these. I think I will continue to be blissfully ignorant. Lol.
I will definitely take a leaf out of your book though and read the story before reading them to my kids.
I knew the history of Ring a Ring of Roses but not the others … but knew they were often dark in their original meaning. How strange they have become part of nursery culture and not the horror section of the library where they probably belong better. #TheList
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Hah! I had a similar incident recently when a neighbour donated a load of old books. The girls picked out Little Red Riding Hood and without thinking, I read it out straight away. This older version was violent and graphic even showing a picture of RR Hood’s father cutting open the wolf with an axe to rescue RR Hood and her grandmother! I was horrified but weirdly the kids just took it all in their stride, completely unperturbed. Seems a lot of the earlier versions of old stories are far more graphic and we’ve toned them down over the years. I find the old folk stories and nursery rhymes fascinating!! #TheList