Dark Origins of Our Beloved Nursery Rhymes

Nursery rhymes, jump rope songs and catchy little poems have been a part of childhood for centuries. But these innocent little songs have less than innocent origins. Dozens were influenced by political events and the shenanigans of the royal families. Though the words may be pretty and sweet, they are actually filled with subversive messages.
I’ve chosen four of the most disturbing.

Mary, Mary quite contrary
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells, and cockle shells,
And pretty maids all in a row.

Mary in the rhyme refers to Queen Mary I, also known as “Bloody Mary.” As the daughter of Henry VIII (who was famous for beheading his wives) and future Queen of England, Mary wanted to return England to a Catholic state. Before being crowned queen, she reassured her subjects that she would not force them to convert to Catholicism. However, within a month after the jeweled crown was placed upon her head, she nullified the work of her father and half-brother, King Edward VI. She made it law that anyone caught practicing the Protestant faith would be persecuted and executed under the “Revival of the Heresy Act.”
The line “how does your garden grow” does not ask about the quality of the roses and daffodils, but instead the size of the cemeteries and graveyards filled with the bodies of heretics. During what would be known as the “Marian Persecution,” Bloody Mary played a hand in the deaths of at least 300 people.
“With silver bells, and cockle shells, and pretty maids all in a row” paints a lovely picture if only it were flowers and the ladies in her court. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. Silver bells were thumbscrews used to crush the digits of the accused. Cockle shells were torture devices that were attached to…well you guessed it. The “maidens” didn’t wear beautiful gowns, but were horrific death machines/devices. A “maiden” could be the original prototype of the guillotine to behead a prisoner. Or it could be what was called an Iron Maiden which was a sarcophagus with spikes inside. When the prisoner was sealed inside, the spikes impaled their vital organs…slowly and painfully killing them.

Ring around the rosie
A pocket full of posies
Ashes! Ashes!
We all fall down

Remember in kindergarten while on the playground, holding the hands of your friends, skipping in a circle singing Ring Around the Rosie? When we got to “We all fall down,” everyone crumpled to the ground, laughing. In 1665 people fell to the ground in London, but no one was laughing…they were dead. Many theorists and historians believe that Ring Around the Rosie is a parody of The Great Plague outbreak that killed millions of people in Europe. The symbolism is there plain as day once you see it. The rosies (or roses) are the rashes that appeared on the bodies of the inflicted and foretold of their certain and impending death. A pocketful of posies were carried around to mask the odor of decay. Plague doctors packed the “beaks” of their masks with a variety of flowers and spices, believing that it protected them from the deadly disease. “Ashes! Ashes!” - the burned bodies of the dead that filled mass graves. And then…they all fell down…dead!

London Bridge is falling down.
Falling down, falling down.
London Bridge is falling down,
My fair lady.

Did London Bridge actually fall down? Not according to British history. However, according to Viking lore, when the British Isles were invaded in 1014 Olaf Haraldsson (I picture King Harald and Ragnar Lothbrok in my mind) pulled it down. In fact, a 1230 Norse poem chronicles the event with the lines - “London Bridge is broken down. Gold is won, and bright renown.”
There are other darker and more sinister versions of the rhyme. The second verse is

Off to prison you must go,
You must go, you must go.
Off to prison you must go,
My fair lady.

“Off to prison you must go,” is said to refer to the medieval punishment called immurement, which was the imprisonment of someone in a room with no windows or doors. Death would come slowly from starvation, lack of oxygen and madness. It was a widely accepted belief that their were bodies encased in the bridge moorings. In fact, centuries ago, people believed that a bridge would collapse if a body was not buried inside…particularly the body of a child.
Who is “my fair lady”? If you go back to the 1014 Viking invasion, the “lady” is the Virgin Mary. The attack on the bridge was September 8th, the traditional and celebrated birthday of Mary. After the bridge was destroyed, the Vikings could not conquer the city because the Virgin Mary protected it.
According to British history, the bridge never fell. The original bridge was demolished in 1831 and rebuilt when it was determined that the cost to repair 600 years of damage was far larger that that to build a new bridge. So, no matter how you look at it…one way or another London’s bridge did come down.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the King’s horses and all the King’s men,
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

This silly little rhyme, like most old British rhymes, involves a member of royalty. Humpty is the representation of King Richard III who ruled for just over two years with an bloody iron fist. His brutal reign was cut short at the Battle of Bosworth on August 22, 1485. The King lead his men into battle on a horse that some say was named “Wall,” an odd name for a horse, but who am I to judge. During the Battle of Bosworth, King Richard III fell off of “Wall” and was bludgeoned and impaled by the swords of his enemies so severely that his men were unable to save him.
To back up this claim, Shakespeare depicted him as “a poisonous bump-backed toad,” and historians believed he had a humpback. After King Richard III’s skeleton remains were found under a Leicester parking lot, a thorough examination found that he suffered from severe scoliosis and a misalignment of his shoulders. Furthermore, the remains showed evidence of 11 wounds, eight to his skull.