What does your favorite children’s song really mean?
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Nursery rhymes are part of everyday life and are passed down from generation to generation. However, it is remarkable how little we know of its origins.
The famous children’s song Humpty Dumpty was recently the focus of a Twitter storm after one author suggested that the song’s main character was not an egg, but a cannon in the English Civil War.
Now, a nursery rhyme expert reveals the truth behind all of our most treasured classics: and the key is to observe the meaning of the actual words and lines at the time they first appeared in print.
In his new book Cracking Humpty Dumpty – An Investigative Trail of Favorite Nursery Rhymes: Hastings writer Tim Devlin debunks other myths surrounding these comforting rhymes, including that Ring a Ring O’Roses was about the Great Plague of 1665.
Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch water. Or did they? In fact, it looks like they didn’t at all.
Tim told FEMAIL: ‘I’ve always been fascinated by nursery rhymes.
“I started researching them after hearing someone sing Ring a Ring o’Roses during the pandemic, and quickly realized it had nothing to do with the plague, as was commonly thought.
“In fact, that was a theory first invented in 1951.”
He added: ‘Almost everyone in the English-speaking world knows a lullaby. But they don’t know what they mean.
Some are nonsense. Some are slanderous and some are obscure. But they help young children to speak and read and have become part of the fabric of life and our social history.’
Here, Tim shares the meanings behind the nursery rhymes you’ve sung thousands of times but never knew their true meaning…
jack and jill
“This was the biggest shock of all for me,” Tim said.
A drawing with the oldest surviving version of the rhyme shows two young men named Jack and Gill (not Jill). The best theory is that it refers to the evil King John who lost his crown when the Pope took it from him because he refused to accept his companion (nicknamed Gill) as the new Archbishop of Canterbury.
“The old man who had just died was called ‘Walter’ and Jack and Gill went up the hill (to visit the Pope in Rome) to look for Walter’s ‘pallium’, a traditional garment.”
Mary Mary Quite Contrary is a nursery rhyme about Mary II, wife of William III, who was a brilliant gardener.
Maria Maria Quite the opposite
Tim explained: “Some have thought this refers to the Bloody Mary or Mary Queen of Scots. But they both don’t fit the rhyme as they weren’t keen gardeners.
However, Mary II, the wife of William III, was a brilliant gardener who transformed Hampton Court and gardens elsewhere abroad. Silverbells and cockleshells are exotic plants.
There is a line in the first version of the poem: “Cuckolds all in a row.” It sounds silly, but Mary believed she was cuckolded, which is a brilliant story.
While Humpty Dumpty is often depicted as an egg, author Tim Devlin claims the rhyme is about an exotic cocktail.
humpty dumpty
“I always thought it was Richard III because of the phrase ‘all the king’s horses and all the king’s men,'” Tim explained.
But that verse was added to the rhyme in 1844, many years after it first arose. Humpty Dumpty wasn’t a cannon either.
In fact, it was the name of an exotic cocktail of boiled beer and brandy that gypsies drank. And it was this drink that fell off the wall and could not be made again.
Ring A Ring O’Roses is a children’s song commonly associated with the plague, and inspired Tim to write his book when he heard it sing during the Covid lockdown
Ring A Ring O’Roses
“People think it’s the plague, perhaps understandably because it refers to people falling down and sneezing,” Tim said.
‘In fact, the older versions have nothing about sneezing. However, it’s all about falling down.
“Indeed, it’s a happy child’s game like musical chairs that dates back to the US and Germany in the 18th century, long before it reached Britain.”
In fact, Little Bo-Peep is not about sheep, but about smugglers operating along the East Sussex coast.
little bopeep
Tim said, ‘Forget the sheep. The sheep were in fact smugglers.
‘Little Bo-Peep was the name of a Customs House at St Leonards-on-Sea in East Sussex and the customs officers were called Bo-Peep.
“They lost their sheep (smugglers) and a local joker quipped: ‘Leave them alone and they’ll come home, bringing their tails (loot) behind them.”‘
This fun poem includes the rhyme When the girls went out to play, Georgie Porgy ran away (pictured)
georgie porgie
‘This could have been about George IV, who built the Brighton Pavilion. He loved pudding and cake and he was very fat,” Tim said.
“He had such bad breath that when he kissed the girls it made them cry. Good assumption but incorrect.
‘The poem originally began as Rowley Powley Pudding and Pie. It was about Charles II, who probably kissed more girls than Georgie and had more illegitimate children.
“He was nicknamed Old Rowley after his favorite racehorse who was brilliant at stud.”