Monday, April 20, 2015

Mostly Mamina...blogging from A to Z ...N


N is for nursery rhymes

One of the most valuable gifts that my daughter received was a Mother Goose book. During her first months, I spent some nostalgic moments flipping through pages of nursery rhymes and jogging my memory. 
These rhymes have certainly transformed over the years. It also definitely makes a difference if you're in the UK (or any of the Commonwealth countries I suppose) and  the US. 
Here rhymes have morphed into snippets that can be molded into the fabric of political correctness and niceness. So Humpty Dumpty no longer can end up not being put together by all the king's horses and men. He has to somehow get back on that wall again. (Though why someone would  want to be on the wall, is beyond my comprehension.)
Then there was a version of  'Twinkle twinkle' that I saw on You Tube. It started something like "Twinkle twinkle traffic light". I cringed and hit the stop button vehemently, so I can't tell you how that one went.
Not all rhymes have been transformed, though. One that clung onto its macabre verse is 'Rock a bye baby', which still ends in the bough breaking and the cradle and baby falling down to earth.  
I guess it's only a matter of time when the Political Correctness and Niceness Squad will bring down their truncheon on the rest.



6 comments:

  1. There's plenty of political correctness here in the UK but I think the nursery rhymes have been lelft alone. Thank goodness! I liked this post.

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    1. Thank you for visiting! I'm glad they left the rhymes alone too!!

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  2. Some of the old nursery rhymes were dark and scary.
    Why do we tell those to our kids??

    --
    Tim Brannan, The Other Side Blog
    2015 A to Z of Vampires
    http://theotherside.timsbrannan.com/

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    1. Thank you, Timothy! You're right. But most rhymes are macabre when you think about it. But I think that we're free to make new rhymes without changing the old ones. If people dont want to teach those to the kids, that's perfectly fine.

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  3. J here, stopping by from the #atozchallenge - where I am part of the A to Z Ambassador Team! (I'm a minion/volunteer under Arlee.)
    I'm personally having trouble locating your A to Z posts O,P,Q,R,S, and T. Let me know if I can help you in any blogging way this month.
    @JLenniDorner

    Ring around the rosie -- think they'll change that, since it was about the plague?

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    1. Hi JLenni, thank you for visiting and checking in on me! I havent posted regularly, the past week so am just catching up!!

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