Hey diddle diddle

No recognisable words have escaped the lips of my seven-month-old daughter as of yet, but she is experimenting with an assortment of noises that make Mummy and Daddy giddy with parental excitement. We have realised that the near future will bring us face to face with our own childhood as we start reciting nursery rhymes with which we grew up.

Nursery rhymes are believed to aid the development of vocabulary and counting skills, while specific actions and dances associated with particular songs develop coordination and memory. Therefore, my wife is teaching Finnish songs from her own childhood, which has left the English classics to me and I can't remember more than a couple for the life of me.

Let me see… Rub a dub dub, Humpty Dumpty had a little lamb and Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep, the cow jumped over the moon and the mouse ran up the clock. London Bridge is falling down and Jill came tumbling after, Old Mother Hubbard and Old King Cole were merry old souls, out came the sun and dried up the ten thousand men, but how many were going to St Ives?

My guess is that I need some practice separating Little Miss Muffet from Simple Simon, but so long as my daughter holds off the verbal there is plenty of time to learn the knick-knack, paddy whacks with the help of the Bumper Book of Nursery Rhymes. Upon first flicking through the pages, nostalgia overwhelmed my senses and I could picture days at playschool chanting them repeatedly.

After a closer inspection, I discovered many to be completely nonsensical. For example, one of favourite nursery rhymes as a kid was 'Rub a dub dub' because it featured my surname, but reading it now made me exclaim words that my daughter should not be learning:

Rub-a-dub-dub,
Three men in a tub,
And how do you think they got there?
The butcher, the baker,
The candlestick-maker,
They all jumped out of a rotten potato,
'Twas enough to make a man stare.

'They all jumped out of a rotten potato', excuse me? When I read that for the first time to her, she will pounce on my hesitation with the nimbleness of Jack jumping over the candlestick. What can I say to ease her inquisitiveness? Why can't I remember my parents reading that part to me? Maybe they had no answer either, so used an alternative version.

A quick Google search revealed that the so-called origin is based upon poking fun at men who used to enjoy watching three naked maidens in a tub at an old sideshow attraction in local fairs. In fact, many of the famous nursery rhymes seem to poke fun at many historical figures. Did you know that it is believed that 'Hey Diddle Diddle' is based upon a sex scandal in the court of Queen Elizabeth I?

'Georgie Porgie, Puddin' and Pie' is thought to originate either from the madness of King George III or the womanising George IV. 'Goosey Goosey Gander' refers to Oliver Cromwell and his Roundheads, ' Little Miss Muffet' is claimed to refers to Mary, Queen of Scots, who was said to have been frightened by John Knox, a Scottish religious reformer in the 16th century. Urban legend or truth is in the eye of the etymologist.

I had always thought that 'Ring-a-ring of Rosies' is a reference to the Great Plague, but it was with shock I discovered that this has been widely discredited. Apparently, none of the "symptoms" described by the poem even remotely correlate to those of the Bubonic plague, and the first record of the rhyme's existence was not until 1881. Oh well.

It is time to put aside all this history research and begin to concentrate on bringing the words of dozens of nursery rhymes back to the surface of my memory. I think I'll start with an easy one, like 'Itsy Bitsy Spider'…doesn't that one have some actions to learn too? Damn!