Ring a Ring of Roses

You know clumsy lil Jack who went up the hill to fetch a pail of water? Seems my lil niece Chatty Carmen doesn't know him all that well. At the moment she is not very sure about tumbling Jill either.

One of the books I cherished as a child was a collection of traditional nursery rhymes and even now as my memory fades into senility, I can still recite Solomon Grundy and Hey Diddle Diddle by heart. Just the simple cadence of the largely nonsensical rhyme is enough to put a smile on my face. So I figured why not pass on that tradition with a gift of a nursery rhymes compendium. Turns out Chatty Carmen doesn't even know that the cow jumped over the moon.

So don't even talk about eloping tableware.

Wonder whether Charming Calvin even knows.


This is no laughing matter! The Chinese don't believe in nonsensical rhyme!
Obviously the simple nursery rhymes we learnt in kindergarten aren't quite as universal as we thought. Dismissing them as childish frivolous tunes, the chinese-based nurseries have done away with them entirely - possibly hoping that the endless communist mathematical mantras would keep the unruly tots in line instead. Surely muttering multiplication tables verbatim would put anyone to sleep!

No. The Chinese don't do frivolity.

Though of course when I got older, I became gradually appalled by the subversive - and occasionally macabre - elements behind the nursery rhymes. What a disillusioning moment it was to learn that most of our rhymes - like our favourite fables - are derived from far more sinister origins. Like this one.

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

Bet you didn't know that there are rumours that the harmless lil ditty was based on the great plague? Hell, I didn't need to learn about that! Now each time I hear a buncha rugrats recite the rhyme, I immediately have nightmarish visions of H1N1.