How sweet it is to tuck our little ones into bed, their eyes twinkling with innocence as we serenade them with tales of death, disease, and dismemberment. The Brothers Grimm of the 19th century, gifted us a legacy of fairy tales and nursery rhymes so grim they make modern horror flicks look like Pixar specials. Yet, here we are in 2025 still chanting these morbid melodies to our kids like it’s no big deal.
Let’s take a look at some popular nursery rhymes. Do we ever pause to ponder what we’re singing?
Take Jack and Jill, the cheerful limerick about two kids fetching water. Except folklore enthusiasts suggest it’s not so wholesome. Some historians tie it to 17th-century England, where “Jack and Jill” were code for folks marched up the hill to the gallows. Jack “fell down” and “broke his crown” which was a poetic way of saying his neck snapped in the noose. Jill? She was next in line, tumbling to her doom. Knowing this we still teach it in preschools, complete with hand motions, because nothing says “childhood” like a double hanging.
Then there’s Ring Around the Rosie, the ultimate plague anthem. Fact-checking confirms its roots tie to the Black Death of the 14th century or the Great Plague of London in 1665. The “rosie” refers to the red, ring-shaped sores that marked the infected. “Posies” were flowers stuffed in pockets to mask the stench of decay. “Ashes, ashes” nods to the cremation of bodies, and “we all fall down” was just a polite way of saying everyone died. It’s like teaching kids to chant about smallpox for fun.
And don’t get me started on Rock-a-Bye Baby. This lullaby often traced to 18th-century England or colonial America is about bad parenting. The story, as pieced together by folklorists, might stem from a tale of a woman (most likely a nursemaid or a mother in despair) who placed her baby’s cradle in a tree’s branches to rock it to sleep. Why a tree? Perhaps it was the symbolic abandoning the child. Then the bough breaks, the cradle falls, and down comes baby, cradle and all straight to a tragic end. Some interpretations suggest it’s a metaphor for political upheaval or even infanticide in desperate times. Either way, we’re crooning about a baby plummeting to its doom.
So why do we keep this up? Are we so numb to these lyrics that we don’t notice we’re indoctrinating our kids with horror stories? The Grimm brothers, Jacob and Wilhelm, weren’t writing for kids. They were collecting folktales for scholarly purposes, often sanitizing the bloodier bits. Their 1812 collection, Children’s and Household Tales, included stories of cannibalism, mutilation, and worse, yet we’ve repackaged them as bedtime classics.
Do we ever stop to think about what we’re saying? The satire here is that we call ourselves enlightened, yet we’re still reciting 17th-century death chants like it’s nothing. Maybe it’s time to fact-check our lullabies. Until then, sweet dreams...
Much Love,
Lynn
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ReplyDeleteI think part of the reason for this is that death was much more present and ubiquitous in the society and everyday life of past centuries. For example people went to the gallows to watch executions for fun and even drank the blood of the hanged because it was attributed with healing powers. Into the 19:th century people used to keep deceased relatives in their home for a few days before burial as a way to grieve and say goodbye. This may seem morbid to modern people. People also slaughtered their own animals, which would probably be unthinkable even for many meat-eaters today. All in all, I think death was simply much more normalized in past centuries, and wasn't seen as as frightening and morbid as it is today. And that may explain why these seemingly dark and macabre themes have sneaked their way into innocent lullabies.
ReplyDeleteI've never stopped to think of it that way, but there is truth to this. Public hangings were their version of reality tv.
DeleteDon't forget Lizzie Borden.
ReplyDeleteYes, definitely creepy.
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