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Author
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Comment
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(8/15/05 12:09 pm)
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Re: Playground culture
I would also ask if if any children's rhymes are recorded from that far back (12th-16th century), and this is a genuine question. The absence of "Ring Around the Rosie" would only be significant if there were people out there writing down other childhood chants at the time. If not, it's unsurprising to me that it only starts to get recorded in the 19th century, when folklore collection in general takes off.
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lilly0608
Registered User
(8/15/05 9:22 pm)
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Re: Playground culture
I have seen where, back in the day people used song to teach children complicated issues. Have you heard of the song "The Gray Old Goose is Dead"?
Lily
"If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito."Bette Reese |
Otherworld
Registered User
(8/16/05 2:49 pm)
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Re: Playground culture
there is a tudor recipie for a dish which was live birds under a pie crust which fly out when crust is cut.. but then again it could be part of that added folk lore bit, but i have seen it used in a film.. seems like a peter greenaway thing
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megaerairae
Registered User
(8/17/05 9:57 pm)
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Re: Playground culture
On the other hand, children's rhymes have, even in more modern times, demonstrated a sort of morbid interest in the scandal/horror of the times, i.e. "Lizzie Borden took an axe..."
Or just the plain mobid (bane of my childhood) "Don't you ever laugh as the hearse goes by" Even know, lots of jump rope rhymes that I heard kids use in the school I worked at had to do with drugs (and these are ELEMENTARY school kids.)
here's one from Russia that is rather politically influenced:
Ia sedgu na vishenke
Ne mogu nakushatsia
Diddia Lenin govorit
Nado mamu stushatsia
English Translation
I am sitting on a cherry tree
And can't eat enough cherries
Uncle Lenin says
I have to listen to my mother.
This specific rhyme came off the global schoolyard rhyme project. In my little devil's advocate role, I just thought I'd point out that playgrounds/children's rhymes can be like little sponges of the popular culture of the time, be it plague, murder, politics, or drugs. So while the interpretations of Ring around the Rosie might be completely off-base, there are some grounds for considering them.
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DerekJ
Unregistered User
(8/24/05 3:48 pm)
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Re: ring around the rosie
And although it's long after this thread, might want to check out Chris Roberts' new "Heavy Words, Lightly Thrown", a humorous compendium of all the canon-established rhyme "meanings":
www.amazon.com/exec/obido...1124919945
FTR, Roberts doesn't buy the "plague" excuse either, but gets well into most of the Henry VIII rhymes--such as the "four and twenty blackbirds" (ie. the persecuted monastery clergy)--and the Handel vs. Bononcini feud that gave us Tweedledum and Tweedledee...
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