rhyme

[timepiececlock]

I went all morning trying to remember this. The third line was all I knew.


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;
Was not that a dainty dish,
To set before the king?

The king was in his 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.



Hm... I bet that's an English nursery rhyme. It sounds more English than American.

Comments

[flickums.livejournal.com]

The more I think about it, the more I realise that nursery rhymes are actually quite disturbing.

Re:

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

Actually, they usually taught a pretty good lesson. Most were written for children a century or ten centuries ago, when kids heard about "burning forever in Hell and torture" from a young age anyway, so talking about the practical, if nasty, side effects of foolish behavior was effective. No worse than saying "Don't poke a stick through a strange dog's fense, he might bite your hand off."

I'm not sure what the lesson is here besides teaching social order/hierarchy, and maybe "Don't give foolish gifts that have no value-- they cause trouble." A pie of birds being an exotic, but ultimately pointless, gift. But it also might be bashing the royalty, showing them as shallow money counters who hog the best food, are impressed by shallow things, and don't take proper care of their subjects/servants.

You know what else is creepy when you think about it? Little Bunny Foo Foo.

Little Bunny Foo Foo is going around knocking mice on the head and killing them. He is warned three times to stop, until he is punished by being turned into a goblin or ang ogre or something. There's a lesson-- don't torture and kill things weaker than you.

Also, fairty tales are rather...grim. ;)

[octopedingenue]

Also, fairty tales are rather...grim. ;)

Eeeheeheee. They're best that way! With Little Red Riding Hood eaten by the Wolf for being stupid enough to talk to strangers, and Sleeping Beauty awakened by the suckling of twins at her breasts (she was impregnated while she slept--hellooooo, ComaComaComaComaComa!Cordelia-fic)... *HUGGLES grim(m) fairy tales*

Re:

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

Sleeping Beauty awakened by the suckling of twins at her breasts (she was impregnated while she slept--hellooooo, ComaComaComaComaComa!Cordelia-fic).

Never heard that one before. Having suffered many a menstral cramp (and I'm not even twenty yet), I find it hard to believe that she could suffer through LABOR PAIN and then wake up and someone sucking her breasts.

I did hear two other more violent versions though.

There's the standard, where it's a noble dude who wakes her with a kiss... however there were dozens of men over a hundred years who were cut/bled/starved to death in the rose thorns, not being deemed worthy.

Then there's this version I read by some author, I think it was Anne Rice, where the knight/prince woke her up by raping her.

[octopedingenue]

I'm absolutely fascinated by fairy tales and folklore; I'm intent on studying them as an educational project at some point in my college career, maybe as a term paper or summat... Here is an interesting page on the history of the Sleeping Beauty tale. I haven't read the Anne Rice version you mentioned, but it's probably a play on the version in which Talia (the Sleeping Beauty) is raped and impregnated as she sleeps. "Admiring her beauty for a while"--bleh. Here's an amusingly snarky summation of the same fairy tale. This version has her children sucking the poisoned flax from her finger and awakening her; I'd heard a version in which their nursing awakens her. I've read several modern fairy tale story "revamps" (your Rice story is probably one of them) that explore the darker aspects of this marchen and others like it. They're very, very interesting and probably what got me interested in folklore as an academic subject.

[(Anonymous)]

Hell yeah. Anyone remember 'Ring-A-Ring-A-Roses'? All about the Black Death.

[octopedingenue]

Possible origins of 'Sing a Song of Sixpence'

Re:

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

That's wonderful, thank you.

So people actually made pies with birds in them? That's a neat party trick.

[octopedingenue]

No kidding. I did a minor school project on cooking in the Middle Ages once, and recipes like this one made me not want to eat Ever Agaaaain. (That poor poor goose...!)

[ehann.livejournal.com]

Ha! I could have told you the words...I sang that song to my daughter for half an hour three times a day fro two years--it was the only way to get her to eat. Snerkle!!:)

Re:

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

Yeah? That's cool. Someone sang it to me when I was a little kid, probably both my parents and song-tapes too.