Weird Origins Of 12 Beloved Nursery Rhymes

Nursery rhymes and fairy tales, thought of as children's fare—yet many have dark and disturbing origins.  This week's blog talks about nursery rhymes. Next week's blog will shine a light of reality on fairy tales.

You have to admit that there's something a little strange about a group of toddlers chanting a nonsensical nursery rhyme. But if you stop and examine the lyrics of these iconic ballads, you'll notice the songs barely conceal their wicked origins.

Behind most nursery rhymes lurks hundreds of years of history that we routinely ignore. But the veil of light-hearted fun has been lifted revealing their dark origins.

1. Mary, Mary Quite Contrary: Vivid images of a sweet little gardener pruning rose bushes leap to mind. However, the Mary in question was far more sinister than a flower enthusiast. Mary I of England, otherwise known as Bloody Mary, was given the gruesome nickname due to her ruthless persecution of Protestants. In the rhyme, the cockleshells and silver bells refer to instruments of torture. Not so kid friendly!

2. Three Blind Mice: Queen Mary was so bloodthirsty she inspired several nursery rhymes chronicling her behavior. The knife-wielding farmer's wife mentioned in the story? Yep—it's Queen Mary I again.

3. Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush: Kids on the playground skipping in circles and singing the familiar tune don't realize is was created by the female inmates of England's Wakefield Prison. Doing laps around the mulberry bush was the daily exercise routine for prisoners. In fact, the bush in question still exists on the grounds of Wakefield.

4. Pop Goes The Weasel: If you grew up in the U.S., this rhyme was lumped together with Mulberry Bush which makes sense as they use the same musical tune. In England, children were familiar with different lyrics… "Half a pound of tuppenny rice, half a pound of treacle; That's the way the money goes," were the weekly groceries paid for by pawning off Dad's suit, or "Pop! goes the weasel."

5. Rub-A-Dub-Dub: As far as bath-time songs go, it's a safer bet to teach your kids Ernie's "Rubber Duckie" tune from Sesame Street. The nursery rhyme Rub-A-Dub-Dub is the opposite of squeaky clean. In the 18th century, embarrassed butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers had to endure the shame of their indiscreet recreational behaviors being revealed such as visiting peep shows and bathhouses and being immortalized in song. No one is quite sure how it ended up as a nursery rhyme.

6. Goosey Goosey Gander: Running through the lyrics you'll discover that the song describes a moral enforcer who busts into women's rooms and tosses their unmarried, and therefore sinful, partners down the staircase. This one doesn't bother pretending to be kid friendly. But it still has a more layered meaning. Back in the 16th century when Goosey Gander emerged, the Protestants offered rewards for Catholic Priest's heads. Apparently, the rhyme details the popular execution method reserved for the clergyman.

7. Rock-A-Bye Baby: Believe it or not, the gentle lullaby stems from the scandalous family drama surrounding King James II's first son. Rumor had it the King and his second wife, Mary of Modena, arranged to take in someone else's baby and presented him as their male heir.

8. Jack and Jill: This one is definitely not about a pair of clumsy siblings. Jack falling down, and subsequently breaking his crown, was the twisted spin on France's King Louis XVI's death by guillotine. Jill, now known to be King Louis XVI's wife Marie Antoinette, went the same way as her husband. The nursery rhyme paints her grim guillotine ending as "tumbling down after."

9. Baa Baa Black Sheep: This baaad boy sheep was presenting his "yeah, you know I've got wool" face. But even with a hefty coat like the one wrapped around this fluffy guy, somebody is going home wool-less. "None for the Little Boy that cries in the lane," seems like a harsh snub for that poor child. That's exactly what the originators intended since the rhyme was a commentary on the high wool taxes in medieval England.

10. Georgie Porgie: The crude rhyme poked fun at the weight of George IV of England, who apparently had a habit of stepping outside of his marriage. Georgie notoriously fathered many illegitimate children and recognized a second wife, ignoring the public perception.

11. London Bridge Is Falling Down: Over the years, there hasn't been a definitive explanation of this bizarre yet cheery song of structural collapse. However, in 1844, a travel writer named Samuel Laing spotted a big clue while translating a Norwegian text. Tracing through the Norse text he found a verse about Viking King Olaf II leading a brutal attack on the famous bridge in the years 1009 or 1014. However, this was never confirmed.

12. Humpty Dumpty: If you take a quick look at the lyrics, you'll notice there's not even one example of identifying Humpty as an egg-like creature. Nevertheless, everyone is sure he's an egg. However, there's more to the story. Humpty Dumpty represents two different subjects: one human, one weapon. The man: King Richard III, nicknamed The Hunchback King. The device: a trusty English Civil War cannon. 

6 Important Lands that Never Existed

This week's blog is about 6 lands believed to be real at the time but since have proven to be no more than myths.

Ancient travelers (and by ancient I mean many centuries ago, maybe even millenniums) told stories of mysterious places located in the unexplored reaches of the world—fabled cities, phantom islands and exotic civilizations.  Even though these lands were usually dismissed as myths and legends, a few of them found their way onto world maps and helped inspire some of history's most important journeys of discovery.  From a fabled Christian empire in Asia to a supposed lost kingdom in Canada, find out more about six of the most influential lands that never were.

1) Thule

A subject of fascination for ancient explorers, romantic poets and Nazi occultists.  Thule was an elusive territory believed to be located in the frozen north Atlantic near Scandinavia. Its legend dates back to the 4th century B.C., when the Greek journeyman Pytheas claimed to have travelled to an icy island beyond Scotland where the sun rarely set and land, sea and air combined into a bewildering, jelly-like mass.

Many of Pytheas' contemporaries doubted his claims, but that didn't stop distant Thule from lingering in the European imagination.  It eventually became synonymous with the northernmost place in the known world.  Explorers and researchers variously identified it as Norway, Iceland and the Shetland Islands, and it served a recurring theme in poetry and myth.  The island is perhaps most famous for its connection to the Thule Society, a post-World War I occult organization in Germany that considered Thule the ancestral home of the Aryan race. The Munich-based group counted many future Nazis among its members, including Rudolf Hess, who later served as Deputy Führer of Germany under Adolf Hitler.

2) The Kingdom of Prester John

For more than 500 years, Europeans believed a Christian king ruled over a vast empire somewhere in the wilds of either Africa, India or the Far East.  Talk of this mythical land first surfaced in 1165 after the Byzantine and Holy Roman emperors received a letter—most likely a European forgery—from a monarch calling himself Prester John.  The mysterious king claimed to serve as supreme ruler of the three Indies and all its 72 kingdoms.  He described his realm as a utopia rich in gold, populated by exotic races of giants and horned men.  Perhaps most important of all, Prester John and his subjects were Christians—even the name Prester meant Priest.

Despite the fact that a Papal mission to find Prester John's court disappeared without a trace, the myth of his kingdom took hold among Europeans.  Crusading Christians rejoiced in the idea that a devout ruler might come to their aid in the struggle against Islam during the Crusades, and when Genghis Khan's Mongol hordes conquered parts of Persia in the early 1200s, many mistakenly credited Prester John's forces with the attack.  The kingdom later became a subject of fascination for travelers and explorers.  Marco Polo provided a questionable account of encountering its remnants in Northern China.  Vasco da Gama and other Portuguese mariners searched for it in Africa and India.  While explorers eventually discovered a Christian civilization in Ethiopia, it lacked the grandeur and the gold Europeans had come to associate with Prester John's realm. By the 17th century, the legend had faded, and the famed empire was dropped from most maps.

3) Hy-Brasil

Long before Europeans ever stepped foot in the New World, explorers searched for the island of Hy-Brasil, an ethereal land said to exist off the west coast of Ireland.  The story of Hy-Brasil most likely comes from Celtic legend—its name means Isle of the Blest in Gaelic—but its precise origins are unclear.  Hy-Brasil first appeared on maps in the 14th century, usually in the form of a small, circular island with a narrow strait splitting it in two.  Many mariners accepted it as a real place until as recently as the 1800s, and it became popular as the basis for myths and folktales.  Some legends described the island as a lost paradise.  Others claimed that it was perpetually obscured by a dense curtain of mist and fog, only becoming visible to the naked eye every seven years.  [which sounds as if it might have been the genesis of the Lerner & Lowe musical BRIGADOON about a village in Scotland that appeared out of the mist every one hundred years]

Despite its somewhat whimsical reputation, Hy-Brasil was widely sought after by Britain-based explorers in the 15th century. The navigator John Cabot launched several expeditions in an attempt to find it.  It's suggested that he had hoped to locate it during his famous journey to the coast of Newfoundland in 1497.  Documents from Cabot's time claim that previous explorers had already reached Hy-Brasil, leading some researchers to argue that these unnamed mariners may have inadvertently traveled all the way to the Americas prior to Christopher Columbus.

4) El Dorado

Beginning in the 16th century, European explorers and conquistadors were intrigued by tales of a mythical city of gold located in the unexplored reaches of South America.  The city had its origin in accounts of El Dorado (The Gilded One), a native king who powdered his body with gold dust and tossed jewels and gold into a sacred lake as part of a coronation rite.  Stories of the gilded king eventually led to rumors of a golden city of untold wealth and splendor.  Adventurers spent many years—and countless lives—in a futile search for its riches.

One of the most famous El Dorado expeditions came in 1617, when the English explorer Sir Walter Raleigh traveled up the Orinoco River on a quest to find it in what is now Venezuela.  They didn't find any trace of the gilded city, and King James I later executed Raleigh after he disobeyed an order to avoid fighting with the Spanish.  El Dorado continued to drive exploration and colonial violence until the early 1800s, when scientists Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland branded the city a myth after undertaking a research expedition to Latin America.

El Dorado wasn't the only gilded city supposedly tucked away in the New World.  European explorers also hunted for the Seven Cities of Cibola, a mythical group of gold-rich settlements said to be located somewhere in what are now Mexico and the American Southwest.  The most famous search for the Seven Cities came in the 16th century, when the Spanish conquistador Francisco Vasquez de Coronado scoured the Great Plains of the U.S. in search of a city of riches called Quivira.

5) St. Brendan’s Island

St. Brendan’s Island was a mysterious manifestation of Paradise once thought to be hidden somewhere in the eastern Atlantic Ocean.  The myth of the phantom island dates back to the Navigatio Brendani, or Voyage of Brendan, a 1,200-year-old Irish legend about the seafaring monk St. Brendan the Navigator.  As the story goes, Brendan led a crew of pious sailors on a 6th century voyage in search of the famed Promised Land of the Saints.  The journey on the open sea describes attacks by fireball-wielding giants and run-ins with talking birds.  According to the tale, Brendan and his men landed on a mist-covered island filled with delicious fruit and sparkling gems. The grateful crew are said to have spent 40 days exploring the island before returning to Ireland.

Although there is no historical proof of St. Brendan’s voyage, the legend became so popular during medieval times that St. Brendan's Island found its way onto many maps of the Atlantic. Early cartographers placed it near Ireland, but in later years it migrated to the coasts of North Africa, the Canary Islands, and finally the Azores. Sailors often claimed to have caught fleeting glimpses of the mystical isle during the Age of Discovery, and it's likely that even Christopher Columbus believed in its existence.  Its legend eventually faded after multiple search expeditions failed to track it down. By the 18th century, the famed Promised Land of the Saints had been removed from most navigational charts.

6) The Kingdom of Saguenay

The story of the mirage-like Kingdom of Saguenay dates to the 1530s, when French explorer Jacques Cartier made his second journey to Canada in search of gold and a northwest passage to Asia.  While traveling along the St. Lawrence River at what is modern day Quebec, Cartier's Iroquois guides began to whisper tales of Saguenay, a vast kingdom that lay to the north. According to a chief named Donnacona, the mysterious realm was rich in spices, furs and precious metals and populated by blond, bearded men with pale skin.  The stories eventually transitioned into the realm of the absurd when the natives claimed the region was also home to races of one-legged people and whole tribes possessing no anus.  Cartier became intrigued by the prospect of plundering the riches of Saguenay.  He brought Donnacona back to France, where the Iroquois chief continued to spread tales of a lost kingdom.

Legends about Saguenay haunted French explorers in North America for years, but treasure hunters never found any trace of the mythical land.  Most historians now dismiss it as a myth, but some argue the natives may have been referring to copper deposits in the Canadian northwest.  Others have suggested that the Indian tales could have been inspired by a centuries old Norse outpost left over from Viking voyages to North America.

Fortunately, today we have Google Earth to confirm or deny such rumors of mythical places.  :)

Famous People Who Possibly Never Existed

In our present age of instant information sources (both real and fake), it's easy to search for the biography of a well-known person. However, it was not always this way. The facts about many historical figures weren't written down until years, sometimes decades or even centuries, after they allegedly lived. With these large gaps of time, any evidence of the person's actual existence may be nothing more than stories with an absence of any real proof.

Here is a list of famous people whose names you will recognize but who may never have existed at all, at least not in their popular and commonly accepted form. This list of 6 is only a small number of famous people who may or may not be real. The original list I came across listed 17 people.

Mulan

The tale of a woman dressing as a man and fighting for a cause (whether family, country, or religion) is a timeless theme (think Joan of Arc). Some come with proof to prove they are real and others don't have the necessary credentials of proof. Disney introduced movie fans to the legend of Mulan, though she was already famous in Chinese literature. It's commonly accepted that Mulan was a real person who actually did this. But any evidence of this actually happening is scarce.

The book Chinese Shadow Theatre: History, Popular Religion, and Women Warriors says Mulan might have been a fictional character based in part on Wei Huahu, an actual female warrior from ancient China. As for Mulan herself, the earliest known reference was in an ancient song, The Battle of Mulan. But it doesn't specify when she lived, gives few details of the actual battles she fought, and didn't give a full name for her other than Mulan.

Then there's a text called Lienü zhuan translated as Exemplary Women of Early China, written by Liu Xiang around 18 BC, and packed with over 120 biographies of famous women from ancient China. Despite supposedly being a prominent person, Mulan is not listed. Even though she supposedly lived several hundred years after Xiang first published his book, there's a section at the end for supplemental biographies. No one has ever added Mulan, even though her alleged exploits were quite exceptional.

Shakespeare

Surely the great William Shakespeare was a real person. He has lots of writings and there are portraits of him. So, how could he not be real? I'm been to Stratford-Upon-Avon in England and have seen the house said to be his. Surprisingly, many people are convinced that "William Shakespeare" was a pen name, and whoever wrote those stories might be lost to history.

As presented on PBS, there was a man named William Shakespeare, but we know little about him. We don't know where he learned to write, how he learned so much about law, politics, and history, and his will mentioned no plays or sonnets, which you'd think would be foremost on his mind. It sounds like the real Shakespeare didn't write much more than the daily to do list. If true, then who is the real Shakespeare? Plenty of candidates have emerged over the years, like Francis Bacon, Ben Johnson, and Christopher Marlowe, but these possibilities haven't stuck.

There's another legitimate possibility in Edward de Vere—the Earl of Oxford. According to J. Thomas Looney, a schoolteacher who uncovered a great deal about the man, Vere wrote poetry that reads much like what is attributed to Shakespeare. According to this theory, Vere used an assumed name because being one of the nobility he didn't want to be associated with a low-brow art like playwriting. Then, when he died, his followers published his plays under the pen name of some random commoner named William Shakespeare who had died years before.

Robin Hood

The legendary English folk hero, Robin Hood, is well-known for robbing from the rich and giving to the poor, residing in Sherwood Forest with his band of merry men, and wooing Maid Marian. The stories are certainly fictitious, but was Robin Hood a real person or simply based on one? It's impossible to say if any one individual inspired the legend's creation. The stories are either totally invented, or are a combination of elements taken from different historical sources.

Identifying a single person as the basis for the famous outlaw becomes even more difficult as the stories began to grow in popularity in the 13th and 14th centuries. Various English outlaws began calling themselves Robin Hood. Nevertheless, some historians speculate that Robin Hood was based at least in part on nobleman Fulk FitzWarin, who rebelled against King John (one of Robin Hood's foes). FitzWarin's life was later turned into its own medieval tale, Fouke le Fitz Waryn, which holds some similarities to the Robin Hood stories. If he was the basis, then a name change was a good decision. The name Fulk FitzWarin doesn't exactly strike fear into the hearts of villains.

William Tell

William Tell is a Swiss folk hero who allegedly lived in Switzerland during the early 14th century, when the Hapsburg dynasty of Austria ruled the land. As the story goes, an Austrian official placed a hat on a pole in the city of Altdorf and commanded every Swiss subject to remove their caps in a show of respect as they passed by it. One day, William Tell, a local peasant accompanied by his son, refused to comply. In response, the Austrians forced him to shoot an apple off his son's head at 120 paces or face execution. Tell loaded his crossbow and skillfully shot the apple. He then went on to lead a small revolt against the Austrians.

Tell is essentially the Swiss version of Robin Hood and, much like the outlaw of Sherwood Forest, he probably never existed. The apple story is extremely similar to a Viking folktale, which most likely was imported to Switzerland at some point and used by Swiss patriots as a rallying cry against their Austrian rulers.

Homer

Homer is the Greek poet who wrote two of the books that your English teacher probably required you to read in high school—The Iliad and The Odyssey. Despite the popularity and importance of these mythological epics, their author remains shrouded in mystery. Homer almost certainly was not the creator of these tales, which likely preceded him by about 1,000 years. He was simply the first to write them down. As for the poet himself, some say Homer was blind, while at least one author argues that Homer was actually a woman.

Some historians believe that Homer was not a single person, but rather a group of Greek scholars. In the end, we will probably never know the answer, but the legacy of Homer's works will continue.

King Arthur

We're all familiar with the Arthurian legend. Even if you haven't read the stories, you likely saw Monty Python and the Holy Grail or are familiar with the theatrical production and subsequent movie, Camelot. In any case, the British king is said to have claimed the sword, Excalibur, from the Lady of the Lake and found the aforementioned Holy Grail. These stories are most likely a mishmash of folklore, but was the Arthur of legend based on a real man? The first tales of Arthur appeared in the ninth century and chronicle his battle against the invading Saxon armies, so it's likely that the individuals who served as the basis for Arthur lived sometime before then. Some historians suggest the Roman military commander Lucius Artorius Castus as a possible candidate. Others suggest Riothamus, king of the Britons during the fifth century.

John Henry

John Henry—the steel-driving man has been immortalized in folk music since the 1800s. His Ballad of John Henry tells the story of an ex-slave working on the railroad. He challenged a steam drill to see which could work faster, and he won. He died soon afterwards from sheer exhaustion. The greatest heroes die in the end, and Henry's story has ascended to near-myth because of it.

Thing is, he might actually be a myth. As NPR explains, John Henry is almost certainly a "tall tale," though one based on "historical circumstance." There were obviously men working on railroads back in the 1800s, and steam drills were eventually introduced as a way to speed up labor and reduce costs. More than likely, the rail workers disapproved of a machine taking their jobs, though it's unproven if anybody actually attempted to work faster than one.

It's Friday the 13th —Does it make you stop and think?

Triskaidekaphobia:  Fear of the number thirteen.

Paraskevidekatriaphobia:  Fear of Friday the 13^th.

An obviously irrational concept that a mere number can bring bad luck to someone.  Or that a specific day of the week can be unlucky.  But that doesn't stop us from dwelling on the possibility.

This coming Friday is Friday the 13^th.  The tradition of Friday being a day of bad luck dates back centuries with some of the more common theories linking it to significant events in the Bible believed to have taken place on Friday such as the Crucifixion of Christ, Eve offering Adam the apple in the Garden of Eden, the beginning of the great flood.

Many sources for the superstition surrounding the number thirteen and its association with bad luck also derive from Christianity with the Last Supper being cited as the origin.  Judas was the thirteenth person to be seated at the table.

And when you put the two bad luck symbols together you get Friday the 13^th—the day associated with misfortune.

One legend of the origin of Friday the 13^th as unlucky comes from the persecution of the Knights Templar. Philip IV of France borrowed enormous sums of money from the very wealthy Templars to finance a war with England. An ineffectual king and an even worse military commander, Philip was easily defeated. He saw a way of both currying favor with the Pope and eliminating his huge debt. On that fateful day of Friday, October 13, 1307, he ordered all Templars arrested and their property seized. Jacques DeMolay, the Grandmaster of the order, was thrown in prison along with several other high-ranking members of the order. The Knights Templar, which had dominated medieval life for two centuries, were no more. Unfortunately for Philip, the Templars had learned of his planned treachery before hand. Many of them escaped and their vast stores of treasure were hidden from the King's soldiers. Jacques DeMolay was burned alive after being tortured when he refused to admit to any wrongdoing. Another legend that has also persisted is that Jacques DeMolay cursed both Philip IV and Pope Clement V, as he died. Philip and Clement died within months of DeMolay's death.

Superstition is a belief or notion not based on reason or knowledge.  An irrational belief.  Lots of superstitions came into being during the Dark Ages, a time when living conditions were so severe that people reached out to anything that might bring them help and solace with the results being explanations for what seemed unexplainable at the time.  Religious beliefs and lack of scientific knowledge helped to spawn many superstitions.

Superstitions differ from culture to culture, but we all have them even if it's only paying surface homage to the concept.  We don't believe in the good luck vs. bad luck of chain letters/chain e-mails/texts, yet it often comes down to saying what's the harm, then sending them on to avoid breaking the chain.

We often follow the tradition of the superstition without really knowing why it's the traditional thing to do.  If we blow out all the candles on our birthday cake with one breath while making a silent wish, then the wish will come true.  When expressing a desire for good luck (we'll be able to go on the picnic if it doesn't rain), we grin, then we knock on wood as we emit an embarrassed chuckle.

In Western folklore, many superstitions are associated with bad luck.  In addition to Friday the 13^th, there's walking under a ladder, having a black cat cross your path, spilling salt, stepping on a crack, and breaking a mirror among others.

In addition to cultural superstitions, there's also certain occupations that evoke various rituals to bring on good luck.  It seems to me that gamblers and sports figures have the most superstitions and rituals to insure good luck.

Do you have any superstitions that you hold dear?  Are they more of a traditional situation handed down through your family or are they superstitions that have come down through history?

And I'm sure there won't be any unpleasantries or bizarre accidents on Friday the 13^th this month. (knock on wood).