Nursery rhymes

[mary1947 2,090]

Any member who lives/or use to come from Hucknall and reads the local Dispatch will know what I'm talking about.

 

Any way here goes in the Dispatch the other week was an interesting article 

Why don't we teach "Nursery Rhymes to younger children? any more this was a question asked by a reader. I agree why do we not teach "Nursery Rhymes" any more. All they  seem to teach now is "the wheels on the bus"  Nursery Rhymes were a great way of getting children learning about times past example! Ring a Ring of Roses this rhyme was chanted after the black death as the ending was all fall down, their are many more Rhymes that tell us things that did happen in the past.

Lets hear members views on the subject.

[Jill Sparrow 10,331]

This is just another example of attempts to sideline the study of history. Nursery rhymes are fascinating and many are highly political comments on historical events and situations. They should be part of children's education as they often led to questions on the child's part about the origin of the rhyme. Thus, an interest in history develops. Our history is one of the most illustrious in the world and we SHOULD BE PROUD OF IT!

[plantfit 7,645]

Who was it said "Without history there is no future"

 

Rog

[Compo 10,328]

You did just now, Rog!

 

[Compo 10,328]

Innit marvellous! I spent ages replying to this topic and it has just disappeared!

 

Trying again:

 

For Mary1947......

Ring-a-ring o' roses,
A pocket full of posies,
A-tishoo! A-tishoo!
We all fall down.

Cows in the meadows
Eating buttercups
A-tishoo! A-tishoo!
We all jump up.

 

The invariable sneezing and falling down in modern English versions have given would-be origin finders the opportunity to say that the rhyme dates back to the Great Plague. A rosy rash, they allege, was a symptom of the plague, and posies of herbs were carried as protection and to ward off the smell of the disease. Sneezing or coughing was a final fatal symptom, and "all fall down" was exactly what happened.  However according to Wikipedia, folklore scholars regard the theory as baseless for several reasons:

• The plague explanation did not appear until the mid-twentieth century.
• The symptoms described do not fit especially well with the Great Plague.
• The great variety of forms makes it unlikely that the modern form is the most ancient one, and the words on which the interpretation are based are not found in many of the earliest records of the rhyme.
• European and 19th-century versions of the rhyme suggest that this "fall" was not a literal falling down, but a curtsy or other form of bending movement that was common in other dramatic singing games.

[Compo 10,328]

Diddle, diddle, dumpling, my son John,

Went to bed with his trousers on;

One shoe off, and the other shoe on,

Diddle, diddle, dumpling, my son John.

 

Mary had a little lamb,

It followed her to sleep, 

The lamb turned out to be a ram,

Now Mary's full of....no wait a minute, can't use that one on here - it's a family forum!

[plantfit 7,645]

Mary had a little lamb she also had a bear,I have seen her little lamb but I've never seen her b- - -  no better not Rog

 

Rog

[MargieH 7,614]

Compo, your post that you say had disappeared was in 'whatever happened to...' 

because I've just replied to It!!   

 

we're both getting our threads mixed up...

[MargieH 7,614]

Reading 'diddle diddle  dumpling ... ' reminded me of one nursery rhyme my mum used to sing to me...

 

'Old Mother Slipper Slopper jumped out of bed

and out of the window she popped her head

"John, John, John, the grey goose is gone

and the fox has gone to the town - O'

 

well, she was a country girl who used to live on a farm...

 

Also...

'Sing cock a doodle do, my dame has lost her shoe,

my master's lost his fiddling stick and doesn't know what to do'

 

What  is a fiddling stick,  I wonder

[Cliff Ton 10,490]

1 hour ago, Compo said:

Innit marvellous! I spent ages replying to this topic and it has just disappeared!

 

20 minutes ago, MargieH said:

Compo, your post that you say had disappeared was in 'whatever happened to...' 

 because I've just replied to It!!   

we're both getting our threads mixed up...

 

I apologise for causing the chaos...... The nursery rhymes had originally started in "Whatever happened to.." but I moved them into their own separate thread - which is this one. Unfortunately everything crossed at the same time. Hopefully we are now stable. 

[Jill Sparrow 10,331]

I remember all those, Margie. Loved my book of nursery rhymes as a very young child. Besides their history, they develop children's sense of rhythm, pitch and memory. Most important of all are early language skills. Sadly, health visitors today often express concern that children do not or cannot communicate verbally because no one talks or reads to them. Extremely sad.

 

By the age of 18 months, I'm told that people were telling me to be quiet! No surprise there, then! 

[carni 10,094]

44 minutes ago, MargieH said:

What  is a fiddling stick,  I wonder

 

Perhaps he played the violin Margie. Hope So?

[loppylugs 8,429]

Rhythm, pitch and memory.  I don't think anybody read to me.  Maybe that's why I struggle with rhythm and timing in music.   They always seemed to me to be telling me to shurrup! 

[Jill Sparrow 10,331]

There is evidence that our first form of communication as a species was through pitched sound...an early form of singing! Our remote ancestors probably sounded a bit like Jake when he howls: Where's me dinner, dad? 

[mary1947 2,090]

On ‎30‎/‎11‎/‎2017 at 10:34 AM, Compo said:

Diddle, diddle, dumpling, my son John,

Went to bed with his trousers on;

One shoe off, and the other shoe on,

Diddle, diddle, dumpling, my son John.

 

Mary had a little lamb,

It followed her to sleep, 

The lamb turned out to be a ram,

Now Mary's full of....no wait a minute, can't use that one on here - it's a family forum!

LIKE IT LIKE IT Compo

But my father always said this 

quote Mary had a little lamb, its feet were as black as soot, and into Marys bread and jam, he puts his sooty foot. 

Amazing what you remember.

 

[Chulla 4,946]

I had a little nut tree, nothing would it bear,

But a silver nutmeg and a golden pear.

The King of Spain's daughter came to visit me,

And all because of my little nut tree.

[loppylugs 8,429]

Fight the good fight

with all your might

sit on a barrel of dynamite

light the fuse and you will see.

Italy, France, and Germany.

 

As you say, funny what you remember.  Kids twisted a hymn we used to sing in assembly 

[siddha 825]

I found this on an on-line thesaurus ....................................

The term fiddlesticks derives from the literal 'fiddle sticks', that is, the bows that are used to play violins. Those have been named in English since the 14th century - then as 'fydylstyks'.

The word was appropriated to indicate absurdity in the 17th century. Thomas Nashe used it that way in the play Summer's Last Will and Testament, 1600:

A fiddlesticke! ne're tell me I am full of words.

There's nothing inherently comic about a violin bow. It seems that 'fiddlestick' was chosen just because it sounds like a comedy word, like 'scuttlebutt' (a cask of drinking water), 'lickspittle' (a sycophant) and 'snollygoster' (an unprincipled person).

In the same way the 'I don't give a fig' was originally 'I don't give a fig's end', that is, it referred to something insignificant, 'fiddlesticks' was originally 'fiddlestick's end', that is, it was a reference to something paltry, trifling and absurd.

[MargieH 7,614]

41 minutes ago, Chulla said:

I had a little nut tree, nothing would it bear,

But a silver nutmeg and a golden pear.

The King of Spain's daughter came to visit me,

And all because of my little nut tree.

So what does this one mean?

[woody 555]

Don't know but give the pc brigade half an hour and they'll find something allegedly offensive that the rest of us would ignore.

[loppylugs 8,429]

Yep, it's quite offensive to Spaniards.    

[Commo 1,292]

I believe it refers to the marriage of Catherine of Aragon of the royal Spanish court to Prince Arthur, the eldest son of Henry 7th, but the reference to nut trees evades me, unless it meant that Arthur had very little wealth and needed her dowry. Arthur died within a year of the marriage and in order to keep her dowry she was then wed to Arthur`s brother Henry who became the 8th on his father's demise.

[Gem 1,430]

Ben and I went back to school after last weeks little spat, and this afternoon we went into the nursery for sing along. The  who lady who takes the singing  is in her 60s  so sings all the old nursery rhymes, she says the one that gets her goat is BaBa black sheep, she sings BaBa little sheep.    The only problem is for some reason Ben howls  to Mary Mary quite contrary and Hickory Dickory Dock.

[woody 555]

Since when has little been a colour?

[plantfit 7,645]

Hey diddle diddle the cat had a tiddle on the kitchen floor, the little dog laughed to see such fun so the cat tiddled some more

 

My kids used to love me telling them nursery rhymes

 

Rog