The littlest one got a present of a book of nursery rhymes recently. It’s a magnificent volume: hard-covered, beautifully illustrated, with the most fabulous colours. It’s a family heirloom sort of book, the kind worthy of being passed down through generations.
Taking it out one evening, I settled both girls down on the couch beside me. Such a gentle way to spend the half hour before bed, I thought and, as I opened the cover, it struck me that even the expression – nursery rhymes – really is marvelously evocative; an old-fashioned term which somehow conjures up a better, safer world.
Hey Diddle Diddle came first: a funny, gay, nonsensical little rhyme with that rascal of a dog laughing to see such fun and those pals of his, the dish and the spoon, running off together like that. Then came Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary in her lovely garden full of silver bells and cockle shells and pretty maids in a row.
This is nice, I thought, looking down at my girls, at their intent little faces; they were loving it.
I turned another page. “Ahh,” I sighed fondly – Hush a-bye baby – an old favourite of mine when I was a child. I began to sing it softly.
“Hush a-bye baby in the tree-top,
When the wind blows the cradle will rock,”
What a lovely image, I thought: a little baby sleeping in the tree, perhaps in its little basket suspended in the branches.
“When the bough breaks the cradle will fall,
Down will come cradle, baby and all.”
The ending took me by surprise – I didn’t remember it being quite so dramatic. I glanced down at the two-and-a-half-year-old, she had a puzzled expression on her face, as if the ending wasn’t what she was expecting either. Quickly I moved on, before she could formulate any thoughts she was having into a question
Next came Georgie Porgie but as I read out the words, once again they weren’t quite as I remembered. Just who was this Georgie Porgie who kissed the girls and made them cry, but was cute enough to scarper before the boys came out to play? Unbidden a picture came to my mind: some shifty, sweaty, overweight Benny Hill type– the village pervert. Ugh!
I quickly turned to the next page: to the old woman who lived in the shoe.
“Now this is a good one,” I said, but again my memory had omitted some of the baser details. For the first few lines my sympathies lay with the old woman. She certainly had a lot to contend with. Living in a shoe, no matter how big or well equipped, can’t be a bundle of laughs for any family. As far having so many children she didn’t know what to do, well, I’ve only got two, and at times I feel like that, yet she had dozens. And then to find herself in such financial dire straits that she can’t afford to give them some bread with their broth – of course that would break any mother’s heart. So, yes, there’s no doubt, times were hard for her but that hardly justifies, “whipping them all soundly and putting them to bed.”
The two-and-a-half-year-old was staring up at me wide-eyed. I began flicking furiously.
Three blind mice? I don’t think so. Why didn’t the farmer’s wife just bring in rentokill? Because she was a sadist! Because she cut off the tails of those three defenceless little blind mice with the carving knife for the sheer pleasure of it!
Stealing is wrong – no one’s arguing with that but did Tom, Tom the Piper’s have to get beat so badly just for robbing one measly pie that he ran off down the street roaring?
And poor old Johnny, all he got paid was a penny a day because he couldn’t work any faster. Where were the trade unions that day, I’d like to know.
And little “Diddle Diddle Dumpling, my son John”, so badly looked after that he went to bed with his trousers and one shoe on – no one to care for him properly. And things were no better for little Tommy Tucker who had to sing for his supper. If you want my opinion, Social Services could have done with paying a visit to either of these two lad’s homes.
And what about Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater? Hardly a model husband. He stuck his first wife in a pumpkin and there he kept her very well, so he says but what exactly did happen to her in the end? Was she still alive when Peter went off and got himself that second wife and, if she wasn’t then I, for one, would be quite interested in the circumstances of her death. The gardaí could do worse than to pay him a visit.
And perhaps they should look in some of the other “accidents” while they’re at it. Just what happened up there on that hill with Jack and Jill? People don’t “fall” down and break their crown – no, if you ask me, there’s something funny about that whole business. I don’t think the gardaí would be wasting their time if they were to ask Jill to come down to the station. And people, or eggs, for that matter, don’t just “fall” off walls either. And did Mary really lose her sheep or did a lorry with men in caps pull up in the dead of night …
Accidents, sexual deviants, child neglect, exploitation of labour, wayward spouses, cruelty to animals – I might as well have plonked the girls down in front of the evening news for half an hour!
