Nursery Rhymes

Nursery Rhymes “Baa Baa Black Sheep”, “Jack and Jill”, and “Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater” are very well known around the world. They are told to our children at a young age and are remembered forever. Should they really be told and remembered? There is a lot of dark twisted violent meanings behind some of these simple nursery rhymes. “Ring around the Rosy”, “Humpty Dumpty”, “Rock-a-Bye, Baby”, “London Bridge”, “Jack be Nimble “ and “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary” are some of the rhymes I can vividly remember from my childhood. They have some very dark meanings about what you would not want to tell your children when they're so young. “Humpty Dumpty” is also a well known nursery rhyme around the world. This is also told to lots of young children, but this one is not a rhyme to help kids sleep but just a fun one to say. “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”(Brainz). Humpty, in this rhyme, is portrayed as a young boy who is an egg. He is sitting on a wall and something comes and knocks him over. He falls to the ground and crashes and breaks, and no one is able to put him back together. But truthfully this is not what it is about. There are many meanings to the Humpty Dumpty rhyme. Back in the 16th century, there was a brandy and egg based drink. There for the rhyme came along as a way to describe any gender clumsy drunk person. These people have a tendency to be always falling over. During the English Civil War in 1641, there was a wall with a giant gun on it that was called “Humpty”. The wall was located in the City of Colchester. The name "Humpty" came about most likely because the cannon was slightly odd looking and awkward. Therefore, after that date, the rhyme was known to be about this cannon. The wall fell obviously and “all the kings’ horses and all the kings’ men couldn’t put Humpty back together again”, if you catch my drift. This 400 year old rhyme was