Nursery Rhymes

Many of the nursery rhymes we have grown up with are catchy, and we can recite them without even realizing the meaning behind them.  How many people really know that ring around the roses refers to the Bubonic plague, and that when people say ashes ashes, they are referring to the cremated bodies of the dead.  I found this really cool website that provides the historical backgrounds of our favorite nursery rhymes. Here is another example:

Mary Mary quite contrary, 

How does your garden grow?

With silver bells and cockle shells 

And pretty maids all in a row.

The Mary they are talking about is Mary Tudor, the oldest daughter of King Henry VIII, also referred to as "Bloody Mary."  She was a devout Catholic ruling a Protestant country, and a lot of Protestant officials were killed during her reign.  The garden in the rhyme is a graveyard, and it grew through executions.  Silver bells and cockle shells are symbolic for the various torture devices that were used on the victims.  Maids are short for "Maiden" which was the name of the execution device similar to a guillotine.  Unfortunately, unlike the guillotine one's head did not always get severed cleanly, so sometimes it took more than one whack.  Gruesome I know, but oh so interesting.

If you want to check it out for yourself here is the website:

www.rhymes.org.uk

Live big,

Ari