Weird Origins Of 13 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 it 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.

13. Ring Around The Rosie:  This goes back to the Middle Ages, to the time of the plague/black death. People wore bouquets of flowers to counter the smell of all the dead bodies. Ashes ashes all fall down refers to those who died from the plague being cremated. 

Dangerous Wallpaper

The desire to decorate our walls dates back to the caveman days when our ancient ancestors marked their cave walls with dots, lines, zigzags, and cross-hatching. Fast forward tens of thousands of years and we have modern day wallpaper providing that decoration.

Some of the earliest known examples of wallpaper are thought to date back more than 2,000 years to China's Qin dynasty. Images of landscapes, flowers, and birds were painted on rice paper. By the 12^th century, this craft was believed to have traveled to the West via the Silk Road. By the end of the 18^th century, mechanization created a change in the industry.

So, you ask, what is it about wallpaper that could possibly be considered dangerous? The mystery is in the way it was being made at that time. There are hundreds of samples of wallpaper from that era located in The National Archives in London that were scientifically proven to contain arsenic, an innocuous looking white powder known even at that time to be poisonous. The arsenic also produced vibrant color that, after centuries, has shown very little color deterioration. People working with the wallpaper samples in The National Archives put on gloves before handling the poisonous paper.

For paint and dye manufacturers, arsenic was a cheap product that increased the brilliance and durability of pigments, especially when applied to wallpaper. The public loved the bright colors of the wallpaper. Even when they learned that the dyes contained arsenic, they still did not consider it dangerous (assuming no one licked the wallpaper or their fingers after touching it). What the public didn't realize was that damp conditions caused the arsenic to release a lethal gas. In spite of mounting evidence and increasing public awareness, wallpaper manufacturers were not eager to ban arsenic.

One of the most interesting associations of arsenic laced wallpaper and a death is the case of Napolean Bonaparte.

Napoleon was only 51 when he died on the island of St. Helena, where he had been exiled from France and held captive by the British. There was instant speculation that the British had somehow murdered him. By May 5, 1821, he had been getting sicker for several months, suffering from recurrent abdominal pain, progressive weakness and severe constipation. His last weeks were plagued by vomiting, incessant hiccups, and blood clots in various parts of his body.

The physicians who conducted Napoleon’s autopsy, on May 6, 1821, concluded that his death was from stomach cancer, exacerbated by bleeding gastric ulcers, after a huge dose of calomel was administered to him on the day before he died. Calomel was a compound that contained mercury and was used as a medicine at that time before the dangers of mercury were known.

140 years later, in 1961, an article published in Nature Magazine made international headlines about analyzing a lock of Napoleon's hair which showed that Napoleon may have died from arsenic poisoning. It was proven that the wallpaper in Napoleon's living quarters at St. Helena did have arsenic laced wallpaper. This was greeted by acceptance with the public pleased that the real cause of death had finally been discovered. It was decades later when a rebuttal to the arsenic poisoning claim was presented. The rebuttal did say that in the bad old days of medicine the presence of arsenic was common and specifically mentioned wallpaper

Napoleon's family medical history of gastric carcinomas, and the advanced state of his stomach cancer and bleeding stress ulcers, suggest the initial autopsy results seem to be the most likely cause of death. But that does not negate the reality of arsenic laced wallpaper. 

THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES—the real story

A couple of years ago, I was watching Castle Secrets And Legends on television. One of the segments was about Cromer Hall in England, located approximately 140 miles northeast of London. The Cabell family have been owner and residents of Cromer Hall for many decades.

A local legend told to a visiting Arthur Conan Doyle, along with the physical description of the actual Cromer Hall built in 1829, are said to have been Doyle's inspiration for The Hound Of The Baskervilles published in 1902. Being a Sherlock Holmes fan, I was pleased when the television series aired that episode again. I augmented the information the show provided with a little research of my own starting by locating Cromer on a map.

According to a legend told to Doyle—on August 5, 1577, a large black Hound of Hell materialized in a local church and brutally mauled two people to death. The hound glared at the other people in the church with red blazing eyes, then disappeared leaving only a scorched claw mark on the stone wall to confirm its presence. The mark remains to this day. The beast was called Black Shuk and blamed for all unexplained gruesome happenings that took place from that time on.

Another legend tells of Richard Cabell, a 17th century country squire. After seriously mistreating a village girl, he was chased by wild hounds until he died of a heart attack. Considered to have been an evil man and feared by the local villagers, they entombed his body in a small building by the church and placed a heavy stone slab on top of his grave so he couldn't escape.

The Cabell family has their own version of this legend. Richard Cabell believed his wife had been unfaithful. He chased her out into the night and viciously stabbed her to death. Her loyal dog retaliated by tearing him to pieces.

Doyle took the basics of the three legends along with a detailed description of Cromer Hall, and transported it all to Dartmoor. And the name he gave to the family cursed with the presence of a Hound From Hell due to an ancestor's misdeeds? The coachman who drove Arthur Conan Doyle to Cromer Hall that fateful day for his visit was a man named…Henry Baskerville.

The huge popularity of the story continues today. Devotees of The Hound Of The Baskervilles often dress in period clothes, including the infamous deerstalker cap, and search Dartmoor for the origins of the story.

They do need to keep in mind that it's a fictional story, not a documentary.

12 Unscripted Movie Lines That Became Classics part 3 of 3

This is the final offering of my 3-part blog about movies. It's a given that actors speak the dialogue written in the script, or at least are supposed to say the words the writers gave them. But that's not always the case. Some of our most memorable movie lines were not in the script. They were adlibbed by the actor and were so great they were kept in the movie. And many of them became classics. Here are some of those now classic lines of unscripted movie dialogue.

Casablanca (1942)

"Here's looking at you, kid."

Humphrey Bogart first said this line while teaching Ingrid Bergman how to play poker between takes. The phrase came out spontaneously during one of the Paris flashback scenes and became a recurring line in the movie, most memorably near the end.

Midnight Cowboy (1969)

"I'm walkin' here!"

Dustin Hoffman was genuinely angry when a taxi (not part of the movie) ran a red light and almost hit him and Jon Voight while they were filming a scene on the city streets. Hoffman stayed in character and the line stayed in the movie.

Taxi Driver (1976)

"Are you talkin' to me?"

Robert De Niro did a brilliant job of improvising the entire scene, inspired by a single sentence in the script—Travis looks in the mirror.

Young Frankenstein (1974)

"What hump?"

For his character of Igor, Marty Feldman kept shifting the hump on his back as a joke for the other cast members. After someone finally noticed, the improvisation was worked into the script.

Goodfellas (1990)

"What do you mean funny? Funny how? … Funny like I'm a clown, I amuse you?"

Joe Pesci based this dialogue on an encounter he had years earlier with an actual mobster at a restaurant where Pesci worked.

Jaws (1975)

"You're gonna need a bigger boat."

Roy Scheider didn't have a line right after his close encounter with a Great White, so he made up this one.

Apocalypse Now (1979)

"You're an errand boy, sent by a grocery clerk."

On location, Marlon Brando folded up pages of the script and turned them into a paper hat, which he put on his head. He later ad-libbed some 18 minutes of dialogue for his character, Colonel Kurtz.

The Third Man (1949)

"In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed. They produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

Only Orson Welles would have the confidence to add his own lines to a screenplay by Graham Greene.

Silence of the Lambs (1991)

"Hsssssss."

Anthony Hopkins made an unexpected hissing sound right after delivering the memorable line about eating the census taker's liver with fava beans and a nice chianti. He intended it as a joke. The director kept it in the movie, along with Jodie Foster's stunned reaction.

Deliverance (1972)

"Squeal like a pig!"

The most disturbing line in the movie was improvised on set in an effort to clean up the dialogue, with the hope that Deliverance could eventually be shown on television.

Dr. Strangelove (1964)

"Mein Fuhrer, I can walk!"

Peter Sellers, who played three characters in Stanley Kubrick's Cold War satire, ad-libbed much of his dialogue. The lines were later added to the screenplay after they had been spoken.

The Shining (1980)

"Heeeeere's Johnny!"

Director Stanley Kubrick, who lived in England, didn't know the reference to Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. Jack Nicholson's dark joke nearly ended up on the cutting room floor.

There are, of course, many more occasions where this has happened, producing memorable movie lines. This is merely a sampling.