Children hating child songs

Patser · 27-07-2015 05:49PM #1

So in an effort to distract my 2 year old in the car - as she was slowly doing my head in, as is their norm - I launched into singing any old nursery rhyme that popped into my head. Somewhere from the depths if my memories 'There was an old woman and she lived in the woods ' emerged. Singing it again after all these years once again, I re-realised this is a song all about a woman stabbing a child (up the arse with a whole verse dedicated to describing the knife), before being arrested and executed.

WTF was this considered a children's song when I was young!! We were encouraged to sing this happily, on school trips and the likes. I know rock-a-by-baby is all about a baby falling out of a tree too, but that's nothing as descriptive as this.

In a similar vein I recently heard again Christy Moore singing Green grows the Valley oh - better known as the bodhran song from his Live at the Point album, the original legally compulsory Album every Irish person must own before White Ladder and O. Again another song about infanticide with liberal amounts of incest and damnation thrown in.

Are songs like this just part of parent's murder fantasies when dealing with howling kids or something even more sinister?

One eyed Jack · 27-07-2015 05:53PM

Can't stop singing it now in my head, cheers OP

Cold War Kid · 27-07-2015 05:54PM

Shur look at all the fairy stories of child hating, like Hansel & Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks, Snow White.

Ken Shamrock · 27-07-2015 05:59PM

cassid · 27-07-2015 06:00PM

Rapunzel locked in a tower by a wicked witch

The stories we read our children are not much better, my kids always ask me to tell them my stories, they include themselves in them and not to scary.

3 little pigs, all get eaten once the one who built the brick house

Cinderella has wicked stepmother and step sisters

Hansel and gretel got left in the woods by their father and step mother and a witch was getting them ready to eat them

Pied piper rang off with all the children

Little red riding hoods granny was eating by a wolf

Apparently in the original version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, she does not escape but gets pulled apart limb from limb!!!

Dial Hard · 27-07-2015 06:03PM

A LOT of nursery rhymes and fairy tales are basically cautionary tales/designed to scare kids into behaving themselves. I actually intend to do my Lit thesis on it.

PopePalpatine · 27-07-2015 06:10PM

cassid wrote: »

Rapunzel locked in a tower by a wicked witch

The stories we read our children are not much better, my kids always ask me to tell them my stories, they include themselves in them and not to scary.

3 little pigs, all get eaten once the one who built the brick house

Cinderella has wicked stepmother and step sisters

Hansel and gretel got left in the woods by their father and step mother and a witch was getting them ready to eat them

Pied piper rang off with all the children

Little red riding hoods granny was eating by a wolf

Apparently in the original version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, she does not escape but gets pulled apart limb from limb!!!

Yep, and in the original "Sleeping Beauty", she's raped by her "true love" while she's comatose, and becomes pregnant...twice. She's woken up by one of her children suckling on her finger.

NachoBusiness · 27-07-2015 06:13PM

A ring, a ring o' roses, A pocket full o' posies. A-tishoo! a-tishoo! We all fall down.

Is supposed to have come about as so many kids were dying in the plagues during the 17th and 18th century.

The posies were herbs to get rid of the smell of sickness, and then the sneezing and the falling down was the death.

wp_rathead · 27-07-2015 06:15PM

cassid wrote: »

Rapunzel locked in a tower by a wicked witch

The stories we read our children are not much better, my kids always ask me to tell them my stories, they include themselves in them and not to scary.

3 little pigs, all get eaten once the one who built the brick house

Cinderella has wicked stepmother and step sisters

Hansel and gretel got left in the woods by their father and step mother and a witch was getting them ready to eat them

Pied piper rang off with all the children

Little red riding hoods granny was eating by a wolf

Apparently in the original version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, she does not escape but gets pulled apart limb from limb!!!

My friends and I drunkenly came to the conclusion that the moral of the Pied Piper seems to be "Always Pay Your Paedophile"

Patser · 27-07-2015 06:16PM

And The Little Mermaid fails to get the Prince, dies immediately and turns into bubbles.

Dial Hard · 27-07-2015 06:17PM

cassid wrote: »

Cinderella has wicked stepmother and step sisters

PopePalpatine wrote: »

Yep, and in the original "Sleeping Beauty", she's raped by her "true love" while she's comatose, and becomes pregnant...twice. She's woken up by one of her children suckling on her finger.

You got there before me; I was just coming back to point out that in the original Cinderella (or "Ashputtel", as she was in the original German) the Ugly Sisters cut off toes and a heel respectively to try and fit into the glass slipper when the prince's page came calling with it.

Xaracatz · 27-07-2015 06:26PM

Patser wrote: »

Are songs like this just part of parent's murder fantasies when dealing with howling kids or something even more sinister?

Eh - I think that's pretty sinister already.. :pac:

Same though. In the original Little Mermaid, didn't the mermaid feel pain like her feet being stabbed every time she walked? The cooking the witch in the stove in Hansel and Gretal is also a very creepy image.

The Happy Prince and Other Stories by Oscar Wilde is just pure depression in a book if you read it as an adult. I loved it as a kid though. The poor nightingale and robin..

NachoBusiness · 27-07-2015 06:35PM

The nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty was a about a boy in England in the early 1500s who had unfortunate egg shaped features. He used to sit on a wall surrounding the Tower of London, when Henry the VIII was in reign. The children of the aristocracy apparently bullied him all the time and one day, as he was sitting on the wall playing with his toys, one of them pushed him off and he fell such a height that he basically broke open right on the road below, which as it happens, the King was travelling along in a carriage at the time. Everyone tried to help and one man, the Earl of Kinder, lifted his body up and placed him in the King's carriage, along with his broken toys.

Hammer89 · 27-07-2015 07:01PM

Remember that song - I reckon late 90s - that references stuff like Cats in the Cradle, Little Boy Blue and the Man on the Moon? I'm trying to find it but can't.

I'll describe the video: I think the main singer has long hair, and he'd be a young bloke. I also think there's prisoners breaking rocks in those black and white jumpsuits, like from Oh Brother Where Art Thou. There's also a black guy who puts a hip-hop spin on it. Any ideas?

BoJack Horseman · 27-07-2015 07:05PM

'Rockabye baby'

Why put the thing up in the branches if its going go inevitably fall to its death.

Dial Hard · 27-07-2015 07:20PM

Hammer89 wrote: »

Remember that song - I reckon late 90s - that references stuff like Cats in the Cradle, Little Boy Blue and the Man on the Moon? I'm trying to find it but can't.

I'm not sure what version you're referencing but the song is "Cat's in the Cradle" by Harry Chapin. Sentimental muck, and now that I think of it, Ugly Kid Joe or someone like that covered it in the early 90s, which is probably what you're thinking of.

5rtytry56 · 27-07-2015 07:24PM

Xaracatz wrote: »

The Happy Prince and Other Stories by Oscar Wilde is just pure depression in a book if you read it as an adult. I loved it as a kid though. The poor nightingale and robin..

The poor SWALLOW in the Happy Prince. I played the "sick boy" in the play adaptation of "The Happy Prince" wayyyy back in 4th class primary school 1982 thereabouts. Showing my age now.

loyatemu · 27-07-2015 07:31PM

NachoBusiness wrote:

Is supposed to have come about as so many kids were dying in the plagues during the 17th and 18th century.

Urban myth. It's from the late 19th century and is about playing "ring a ring a rosy"

BlaasForRafa · 27-07-2015 07:34PM

Patser wrote: »

And The Little Mermaid fails to get the Prince, dies immediately and turns into bubbles.

I always knew Bubbles would have a weird origin story...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW7eNNdaJO4

NachoBusiness · 27-07-2015 08:00PM

loyatemu wrote: »

Urban myth. It's from the late 19th century and is about playing "ring a ring a rosy"

That's the first time it was found in print, and in any case, doesn't even begin to explain the meaning behind the words. There is a similar German Nursey Rhyme and it is this which it is thought it have it's true origins (earliest print this was found in print was 1796). Also, just because we can't find reasoning and basis behind certain folklore, does not mean that it is not true.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeEqHclO1HY

SpaceTime · 27-07-2015 08:05PM

That French nursery rhyme Alouette sounds nice but is brutal
And would have animal rights protesters up in arms!

Alouette, gentille alouette,
Alouette, je te plumerai.

Translation

Lark, nice lark,
Lark, I will pluck you.

I will pluck your head. x2
And your head! And your head!
Lark! Lark!
O-o-o-oh

Refrain

I will pluck your beak. x2
And your beak! x2
And your head! x2
Lark! x2
O-o-o-oh

Refrain

loyatemu · 27-07-2015 09:45PM

NachoBusiness wrote: »

just because we can't find reasoning and basis behind certain folklore, does not mean that it is not true.

doesn't mean that it is true either.

27-07-2015 10:29PM

When a child would fall of a pony my granny used say:

Little Johnny Jiggy Jag,
Riding on his little nag,
Rode into Wigan to woo,
And when he rode back,
Fell and broke his old neck,
O Johnny now how-do-you-do?!

Laughing at a paraplegic child, charming. And what about the child cruelty in the oft-omitted last verse describing the horrible scene when Jack and Jill came back from falling down the hill?

Up Jack got and home did trot
as fast as he could caper.
He went to bed and covered his head
with vinegar and brown paper.
Jill came in and how she'd grin
to see Jack all in plaster
Mother was vexed so she whipped Jill next
For causing Jack's disaster.

I'm sorry but these children have just fallen down a hill when fetching water, and one of them is in serious pain. I don't see how senselessly abusing the girl-child should improve matters.

And finally, does anyone know the children's rhyme about some nefarious assasination of members of the Tory party? Not sure if it's an Irish or Scots poem

I'll tell you the story of Jolly McRory
He went into the woods and shot a Tory!
When he came back he told his brother,
They both went back and shot another!

What an act of utter violence. No wonder our grandparents' generation started two world wars.

Cold War Kid · 27-07-2015 10:49PM

There's no actual mention in the rhyme that Humpty is an egg.

NachoBusiness · 27-07-2015 10:55PM

He wasn't an egg. He was an unfortunate little boy, with an egg head.

josip · 27-07-2015 10:59PM

(Original version)
Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water
Jill came down with half a crown
But not for fetching water

27-07-2015 10:59PM

I think Humpty Dumpty was a riddle? I remember having a book of riddles, and it said "{an egg}" beside Humpty Dumpty.

If he was a child, it wouldn't be terribly surprising though.

What's that one about the child's cradle falling to the forest floor when the bough breaks, and down comes crashing "baby and all". Someone should have swung for such child negligence. What a place to leave a baby.

Cold War Kid · 27-07-2015 11:06PM

The Little Matchgirl is another incredibly bleak one: child abuse, child labour, unimaginable poverty, starvation, hypothermia.

Great craic.

Drexel · 27-07-2015 11:14PM

NachoBusiness wrote: »

The nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty was a about a boy in England in the early 1500s who had unfortunate egg shaped features. He used to sit on a wall surrounding the Tower of London, when Henry the VIII was in reign. The children of the aristocracy apparently bullied him all the time and one day, as he was sitting on the wall playing with his toys, one of them pushed him off and he fell such a height that he basically broke open right on the road below, which as it happens, the King was travelling along in a carriage at the time. Everyone tried to help and one man, the Earl of Kinder, lifted his body up and placed him in the King's carriage, along with his broken toys.

I seen, possibly on QI, that they had no idea what it was or the origins of it.

Where did you hear this? Just curious

Heroditas · 27-07-2015 11:21PM

My wife had been reading Pippi Longstockings to our daughter recently.
Pippi is an 8yr old who lives on her own because her mother died when she was a baby and her dad was lost at sea. She fends for herself in a house that is filthy and wears mismatched clothes with holes in them and has a vivid imagination.

Will somebody get Barnardo's on the case!!!

Children hating child songs

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