Yesterday, while having 'play time' with Baby Boy, I decided to break up the regular baby-nanny talk with some music. Having gotten the 'okay' from the family, I put on some Coffee House Rock (whatever that really is). Baby Boy seemed to be enjoying it, but it was getting a bit too much for me, so I turned to Children's Music. The song that came on...
She'll Be Comin' 'Round The Mountain. My first thought was, 'YAY! A song I know and that I can get Baby Boy moving too...' But then as I sang the song, realizing I didn't know it as well as I thought, a verse was sung that made me think, 'Am I really singing this to a child?'
After 'She' comes around the mountain in her red pajamas the audience then sings, 'we will kill the old red rooster when she comes'. Now, I understand that many people own and raise chickens and roosters for this purpose, and so it is not the phrase that is so disturbing, it's the 'chant' that comes next... 'HACK HACK'. It's bad enough to inform the child that we are in fact killing the rooster (for food, which they probably don't get completely), but now we're make the sound and hand motion to go along with. I laughed and had an 'ah-ha' moment, wondering, what else do we sing to children that we don't often consider before singing?
Now, don't take this as me saying you should consider every song you sing to your children before doing so. I'm just sharing some fun facts about songs we typically think as happy and uplifting, or at least fun to sing with children. So here is a list of titles and a short background of what the song/nursery rhyme was originally written about. Please note that not all explanations are 100% true. Some are speculations, some come with a series of stories or versions.
Oh, My Darling Clementine: A Father who loses his daughter to a drowning accident.
Three Bling Mice: Some believe that it was written about Queen Mary I of England blinding and killing her three Protestant Bishops (that one is speculation, but still an interesting semi-fact)
London Bridge is Falling Down: There are many theories behind this song but the overarching theme is that there was trouble bridging the River Thames. One theory, that many might have heard, is that the song refers to the deterioration of the original London Bridge.
Baa Baa Black Sheep: Has often been thought of as a racist song, making reference to the slave trade. (This is also a speculation, not a straight up fact).
Puff The Magic Dragon: (This is myth...) that this song refers to drugs, and the smoking, rolling and getting high off of marijuana. However, after hearing plenty of rebuttal from the authors, it is just a song about growing up.
Humpty Dumpty: Known as an Brandy boiled with ale in the seventeenth century, it was also a name for a short and clumsy person in the eighteenth century. There are theories that the rhyme was connected to the English Civil War and that of Humpty Dumpty being King Richard III of England, but no fact can back these assumptions up.
Ring Around The Rosie: Said to be a song about the Black Plague. Posies, or herbs, were often placed in the pockets of those who were amongst the sick as it was thought they would ward off the plague. However once the plague had gotten into the system of a person, the final symptom was a sneeze or cough, causing them to 'fall down'.
