Academics will tell you that children’s nursey rhymes have profound and often dark origins. As a child I didn’t care that “Ring a Ring a Rosy” was about the Black Plague, and “Little Jack Horner” was about the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII. I loved nursey rhymes because of the rhythm and rhyme. I guess most of us did.
But there were other rhymes that weren’t necessarily traditional nursey rhymes. Some of them were favourites and often recited.
My all-time favourite was:
One-One was a race horse.
Two-Two was one too.
One-One won one race.
Two-Two won one too.
Then there was:
Fuzzy-Wuzzy was a bear.
Fuzzy-Wuzzy had no hair.
Fuzzy-Wuzzy wasn’t fuzzy wuzzy?
Then there was the one for which I always fell:
Adam and Eve and Pinch-Me-Tight
Went down to the sea to bathe.
Adam and Eve were drowned.
Who do you think was saved?
Another was recited in the school grounds but never in front of parents:
Fatty and Skinny were having a race.
Fatty blew-off in the policeman’s face.
My favourite regular nursey rhyme was:
Lucy Locket lost her pocket,
Kitty Fisher found it,
But not a penny was in sight
Except the ribbon round it.
It might’ve been you.
It might’ve been you. etc
I liked it best probably because it was associated with a game of sitting in a circle and hiding an object and chasing other people. (Incidentally, if you don’t know it, it’s sung to the same tune as “Yankee Doodle” and they think that Lucy Locket may have come before Yankee Doodle!)
Perhaps you have some rhymes from childhood that you might share in the comments? They don’t have to be utterly wholesome if that’s the way they were!
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