nursery rhymes

Post Reply New Topic

Rock-a-bye-baby On the treetop
When the wind blows,
The cradle will rock.
When the bough breaks,
The cradle will fall
And down will come baby
Cradle and all

if you sung this to a baby and it had known what was said
dont you think the baby would have nightmares?

yep! ha ha ha

Pretty strange how it stuck, and so many parents/people sing it.

can anyone say this right?

Peter Piper picked a peck
Of pickled peppers;
A peck of pickled peppers
Peter Piper Picked

If Peter Piper picked a peck
Of Pickled peppers,
Where's the peck of pickled peppers
Peter Piper Picked?

Ladybird, Ladybird,
Fly away home,
Your house is on fire,
Your children all gone.

This one is not violent, but may cause violent responses after the 20th+ repetition:

Hickery Dickery Dock
The mouse ran up the clock
The clock struck one
The mouse ran down!
Hickery Dickery Dock

I now a well-known German nursery rhyme of which there are countless versions. And I do mean countless...

My amateur translation, loss of rhythm/rhyme:

Sleep baby sleep,
mother tends the sheep
father is in angel's land
angel's land has burnt down,
sleep baby sleep

or

sleep baby sleep
your father is in war
your mother is in Pomerania
Pomerania has burnt down
sleep baby sleep

or even

sleep baby sleep,
outside stand two sheep,
a black sheep and a white sheep,
and when you fail to sleep,
the black sheep will come to bite you

and the peaceful one:

sleep baby sleep,
your father tends the sheep
your mother juggles the tree
down falls a dream
sleep baby sleep

I find nursery rhymes disturbing. I don't think they're child-appropriate. I do know that there has been some talk of revising them to make them more child-friendly, but I don't know if it's been done.

When my daughter was born, someone gave me a huge Mother Goose book of nursery rhymes. As soon as I read them and realized their substance, I promptly discarded the book. There was no way I was going to read that to my child!

My son was petrified of certain nursery rymes! (There's Danish, so there's no point naming them). Really, really scared!
Shows how literally he understood them.