The nursery rhymes YOU sing to your children and what they were really saying (the dark side of nursery rhymes)

Fresh from the knowledge that Humpty Dumpty was not an egg - he was very likely to have been a cannon garrisoned at Colchester Castle, Essex - it got me thinking about other nursery rhymes and their medieval intent. It turns out their is a very dark, medieval rabbit hole

This blog is for any parent who is asked by their child "Why did the farmer's wife cut off the mice's tail?" This blog gives you the proper answer, or at least provides you with something in your arsenal to combat challenging nursery rhyme questions fired at you by your child!

Let's make this very, very clear, the the nursery rhymes you sang as a child and are now singing to your children off by heart are considerably older and considerably darker than they sound. Here are my top 5...

Baa Baa Black Sheep: A tax protest in verse

"Baa baa black sheep, have you any wool? Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full. One for the master, one for the dame, and none for the little boy who cries down the lane."

This one starts with a genuine medieval grievance. Most scholars agree that Baa Baa Black Sheep is about the Great Custom, the export tax on wool introduced by King Edward I in 1275. Wool was England's most valuable export. Edward needed money. He taxed it very, very heavily.

The "bags of wool" went first to the nobles, then the church, and in the end practically nothing was left for the poor "little boy" or the farmers who actually produced it. One third to the Crown. One third to the Church. One third, theoretically, to the farmer who sheared the sheep, raised the sheep, and owned the sheep. The maths was not in the farmer's favour.

The remarkable thing is that someone turned this into a children's rhyme. And then parents sang it to their children at bedtime for seven hundred years without particularly questioning it. A quite brilliant piece of political protest. Hidden in plain sight. Dressed in wool.

Mary Mary Quite Contrary: killer queen?

"Mary Mary quite contrary, how does your garden grow? With silver bells and cockle shells and pretty maids all in a row."

This one has two theories, both of which are deeply alarming, and the choice between them essentially comes down to which historical Mary you find most frightening or interesting!

Option one: Bloody Mary.

Mary Tudor was a strict Catholic, and during her reign from 1553 to 1558 her "garden" (or should that be graveyard) grew as many Protestants were executed for not converting to Catholicism. The silver bells and cockle shells in this interpretation are not flowers at all, but torture devices. The "pretty maids all in a row" are Protestants waiting to be executed.

During her five-year reign, more than 280 religious dissenters were burned at the stake, which is how she earned the name "Bloody Mary." "Quite contrary" takes on a different weight when you know that.

Option two: Mary Queen of Scots.

In this version, the silver bells refer to Catholic altar bells, the cockle shells are the badges worn by pilgrims, and the pretty maids are her famous ladies-in-waiting, the Four Marys who served her at court.

Both theories are plausible. Both are considerably darker than a garden. The rhyme was sung to children for generations with nobody apparently feeling the need to explain either option.

London Bridge Is Falling Down — Possibly a Viking Attack

"London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down. London Bridge is falling down, my fair lady."

This one is cheerful. Catchy. Excellent for skipping.

Many sources tie this rhyme to the alleged destruction of London Bridge by Olaf II of Norway some time in the early 1000s, though some historians don't believe that attack ever took place.

The story goes that Olaf, later a saint, which makes this considerably more interesting, tied ropes from his longships to the supports of the bridge, rowed hard downstream, and pulled the whole thing into the Thames. With soldiers standing on it.

Whether or not it happened exactly like that, London Bridge did fall down. Several times. It was rebuilt in wood, then stone. It flooded. It burned. It was used as a fortification. People lived on it. Traitors' heads were displayed on it. It was, by any reasonable measure, an eventful bridge.

The rhyme captured all of this and compressed it into a skipping song. The writer was a very talented individual.

Ring a Ring o' Roses — The One Everyone Gets Wrong

"Ring a ring o' roses, a pocket full of posies, atishoo atishoo, we all fall down."

I have to be honest about this one, I've told a lot of people that this rhyme was about the Black Death. The rosie is the plague rash. The posies masked the smell of the dying. Atishoo is sneezing. "We all fall down" is everyone dying. Turns out I was wrong (the internet makes it a lot easier to find out how wrong you are about everything these days!).

Without doubt that is a compelling story. It has been repeated for decades. It is almost certainly not true. In 2010, English folklorist Steve Roud described the plague origin as "complete nonsense." The folklorists Peter and Iona Opie, who first recorded and debunked the theory back in 1951, wrote that they were "reluctant to go out of the house" because they had to listen to this interpretation so often (seriously if that was their biggest issue in 1951 they weren't doing so bad, imagine there would have been a lot worse things in post-war Britain to concern yourself with - what is wrong with people?!).

The problem is straightforward: the earliest print appearance of Ring Around the Rosie did not occur until 1881, nearly five hundred years after the Black Death. If it was really a coded plague rhyme passed down through generations, somebody would have written it down at some point before the Victorian era.

The plague story itself is now classified by folklorists as "metafolklore" - folklore about folklore. A story that was passed on by word of mouth, grew stronger over time, and is now believed so widely that even professors who know it isn't true can't resist telling it.

The genuinely dark thing about Ring a Ring o' Roses, in other words, is not the rhyme itself. It is how thoroughly we all believed a story about it with absolutely no evidence, and kept passing it on. What was the nursery rhyme about? I haven't got a clue.

Three Blind Mice — A Queen, a Bishop, and an Execution

"Three blind mice, see how they run. They all ran after the farmer's wife, who cut off their tails with a carving knife. Did you ever see such a thing in your life as three blind mice?"

Back to Bloody Mary.

The three blind mice are widely believed to be three Protestant bishops, Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley, and Thomas Cranmer, who were executed under Queen Mary I for refusing to convert to Catholicism. She sounded like an absolute hoot. So the mice represented the bishops who had been blinded by their faith.

The farmer's wife is Mary herself. The carving knife is, in this reading, not a carving knife.

All three were burned at the stake. Latimer's final words to Ridley, "Be of good comfort, and play the man. We shall this day light such a candle by God's grace in England as I trust shall never be put out", are among the most famous last words in English history.

Somebody turned this into a children's song about mice. Medieval people were, as I have noted before on this blog, made of significantly sterner stuff than we are and deeply humourus. Although I have yet to come across a nursery rhyme about gigantic snails...

What my daughter made of this

I told her about the wool tax. She didn't overally understand or care. She is five. She has more important things to do with her time, like crafting or drawing pictures. I opted against explaining the 'Mary Mary' one and will revisit in another five years! Instead I am now only singing 'Hey Diddle Diddle' or songs from 'K-Pop Demon Hunters' to my children.

And for the record: the farmer's wife cuts off the mice's tails because it is seen as a metaphor for Bloody Mary stripping the bishops of their authority and burning them at the stake. What a lovely, lovely Queen she was.

Join Jack's Shield Wall — the free Good Knight community newsletter — at thegoodknightbook.com/shield-wall. New members this month receive a free Guide to Medieval Insults. Which, given the above, feels considerably less dark than it used to. 🏰