Infantile Melancholia
I remember learning
Nursery Rhymes in School and I am sure most of you do too. “How many Nursery
Rhymes do you remember?” I was asked by some friends a few days ago.
We racked our brains and
surprisingly came up with quite a few. As the conversation progressed and we
reminisced, we came to a unanimous conclusion. Most Nursery Rhymes in general,
are sad, depressing and at times even sadistic!
Okay, don’t believe me –
read on.
“Piggy on the railway
track picking up stones / Down came an engine and broke piggy’s bones (Ouch!).
Ah! said piggy – that’s not fair. Now, please listen to the reply of the engine
driver, “I don’t care.” Isn’t that a callous reply?
Next came good old Humpty
Dumpty who ‘had a great fall’. He obviously was smashed to smithereens because
‘all the kings horses and all the kings men could not put Humpty Dumpty
together again’, and there must have been a mess on the pavement. If that was
not a sad end, what is?
Poor Little Miss Muffet
suffered a trauma of another variety. She was frightened out of her wits by a
large and ugly spider and obviously was unable to finish her ‘curds and whey’
which she had just begun to relish.
Who hasn’t heard of Old
Mother Hubbard. She was a kind soul and an animal lover too. However, when she
went to fetch her dog a bone, the cupboard was bare and the poor little dog had
to go to sleep hungry.
Little Jack Horner was
definitely a shy and lonely lad. How else do you account for the fact that he
was sitting all alone in a corner, eating his Christmas pie with his fingers
and talking to himself. Depressing to say the very least.
Jack and Jill were rather
unfortunate too. The good little children went up the hill to fetch a pail of
water. As luck would have it, Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came
tumbling after. She probably broke her crown too.
What about the three
blind mice who ran after the farmer’s wife. The sadistic woman cut off their
tails with a ‘carving knife’. From then on, it couldn’t have been much fun for
the three little mice being both blind and tailless.
I’ve saved the worst for
the last.
“Rock a bye baby on the
tree top / When the wind blows, the cradle will rock / When the bough breaks
the cradle will fall/ and down will come baby, cradle and all”. Now that would
be a very careless mother indeed! Who, in her right frame of mind would put a
baby, in a cradle on a tree top, and that too, on a windy day? Poor, poor kid!
1 comment:
Not to forget the "Ring a ring a roses" which actually talked about the deadly plague disease and I didn't realize that till I became a teacher .
Post a Comment