Sing a Song of Sixpence

Rome, Mama, and I have been reading nursery rhymes these last two days. We found a damaged (illustrated) book that's just FULL of great ones at the bookstore last weekend, and they sold it to us for three dollars. A poet-friend of mine had said recently that they are ominous and even frightening sometimes--especially when you're an adult and you understand the imputations. I had no idea what she was talking about until last night when the three of us sat down and started reading them together. Mama and I were shooting wide-eyed looks at each other over the cover of the book.

Like Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater, who had a wife but couldn't keep her. So he put her in a pumpkin shell and there he kept her very well. What the heck's going on here? Seriously. Did he, like, dice her up and stuff her in there or something? (My first thought.) I read that she was unfaithful so he improvised a chastity belt out of a pumpkin. Makes perfect sense. No, Mommy, that's siiiiiiilly.

Look at the old man that went to bed and snored through some rainy weather. He bumped his head and couldn't get up in the morning. He's dead right? (I didn't find any analysis or history of this one. Tell me, please.)

I guess I haven't thought about these stories since I was Rome's age. Do they teach us the tough lessons that no one else really wants to talk about? They're just another form of myth or something like that--cautionary tales--morality plays? I mean, what were Jack and Jill doin' on a hilltop looking for water? Shouldn't they have been in a low spot somewhere? And why did they fall? It's just a hill. They weren't climbing a cliff. Are Jack and Jill Adam and Eve? Or maybe they were gettin' it on and got caught. So if you're somewhere you shouldn't be, doin' something you shouldn't be doin', you're gonna fall too? Supposedly the earliest, Scandinavian versions were about Jack and his buddy Gill--both boys. That really throws me for a loop.

I just don't know. This is probably old news to most of you. Please, tell me what these stories are about. Anyone?

I'll sign off tonight with my favorite one in the book. I don't think I read or heard this one more than a couple of times when I was a kid. I just LOVE it.

Sing a song of sixpence,

A pocket full of rye;

Four and twenty blackbirds,

Baked in a pie.

When the pie was opened,

The birds began to sing;

Now wasn't that a dainty dish,

to set before the king.

The king was in the counting house,

Counting out his money;

The queen was in the parlour,

Eating bread and honey.

The maid was in the garden,

Hanging out the clothes;

When down came a blackbird,

And pecked off her nose.

They send for the king's doctor,

Who sewed it on again;

He sewed it on so neatly,

The seem was never seen.

Analyze that.

I'm gonna have to include a few of these nursery rhymes in one of my first lessons this year on literary analysis. I need to hear what my brilliant, new seniors can do with some of this stuff. I can't wait.

Oh the lessons of parenthood. They keep coming and coming and coming.