Goosey Goosey who?
VICTORIA KINGHAM
There are a fair number of books in print about nursery rhyme; mostly collections with commentary, occasionally delving into the background and origins of this unfortunately diminishing genre. Old classics have been replaced by cutes-y commercial children’s songs or songs from animated films like Frozen (remember the universal popularity of Let It Go ten years or so ago?) or moronically insistent earworms like Baby Shark.
It used to be a given that one of the essential ingredients of classic works for children was the inclusion of adult ideas. One could read, say, the Alice books, and the story would fascinate most children; reading them later one would realise that they contain satire, mathematics, and philosophy, and appreciate them more. Gulliver’s Travels is often included in lists of children’s classics, and while the idea of tiny people and giants are splendid fantasy, Swift’s work is readable on a great number of levels – I’ve read it at ages 8, 28, 38… each time one’s understanding of its significance is enhanced by age, historical knowledge, and worldly experience.
So it is with nursery rhymes. Who really knew what the words of ‘oranges and lemons’ meant at the time they first played the game? Who understood ‘Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary’ or ever danced round an actual mulberry bush? Yet while happily repeating the words as a child you knew they meant at least something more,even if you didn’t know what it was. Pantomime dialogue sometimes went over your head, especially the inevitable innuendo – so what? The ambiguity made it so much more interesting.
To add to the various published analyses and histories, then, local author Tim Devlin has published his own. The Mother Goose Mysteries delves into the background and possible meanings of a number of once well-known nursery rhymes. He begins by pointing out that there was an actual Mother Goose, first wife of Mr Isaac Goose of Boston, Massachusetts. It’s a persistent myth that was started (some sources say) in typical American fashion – to encourage tourism, so that people would visit Goose’s grave to honour the originator of the Mother Goose rhymes. Devlin picks out historical facts leading to allegories such as Goosey Goosey Gander, London Bridge, Sing a Song of Sixpence. He suggests who may or may not have killed Cock Robin, and that the Lion and the Unicorn refers to the ancient wars between England and Scotland.
It’s all interesting stuff. But the main reason for the book is the topic we started with here, that Devlin has spearheaded a campaign to bring back the popularity of nursery rhymes, which has gained the support of, among others, leading intellectual Marina Warner, novelist and cultural historian. Other supporters are Gyles Brandreth, famed broadcaster and former politician, and Jean Gross CBE, a government advisor and national expert on children’s issues. Devlin calls for a national centre for the propagation of nursery rhymes to be set up as soon as possible, though I’m not sure how effective this will be against the current avalanche of singable dross. Even ‘The Wheels on the Bus’ is already obsolete.
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