Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2021 August 7

= August 7 =

Nursery rhymes
Why are nursery rhymes often filled with disturbing imagery? Was this solely a mnemonic, or was it something else? Viriditas (talk) 21:58, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Here is a BBC article that addresses this issue. Cullen328  Let's discuss it  22:10, 7 August 2021 (UTC)


 * I'll add the caveat that some of those purported explanations are considered...dubious. Ring a Ring o' Roses, for example, may or may not be related to the Great Plague. (Explanations featuring the plague do not appear until the middle of the twentieth century.) Rock-a-bye Baby has been tied to anyone from James II of England to the ancient Egyptian god Horus. Wikipedia's articles do touch on the (possible, putative) origins of many such rhymes; do you have any particular ones in mind, Viriditas? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 22:21, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, this discussion was initiated by my evident horror in revisiting Three Blind Mice. Viriditas (talk) 01:59, 8 August 2021 (UTC)


 * For disturbing imagery, it's hard to beat the aptly-named Grimm Fairy Tales. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:34, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
 * And most of what we read in English is _way_ cleaned up. If you know any German, it can be a lot of fun to read Grimm in the original; the stories in are a lot of different German dialects. So they're both gruesome and unpronounceable. --jpgordon&#x1d122;&#x1d106;&#x1D110;&#x1d107; 23:26, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I think the mention of fun goes to the core of the issue. DuncanHill (talk) 23:28, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Not to rain blood on anyone's parade, but a fairy tale is not a nursery rhyme. The good stuff is long and winding prose, clearly intended for mature children only. Both are fun and loaded with danger, but Mother Goose type "Hey, Diddle Diddle" bedtime horror is more apt to stick verbatim in a toddler's brain forever. InedibleHulk (talk) 07:24, 8 August 2021 (UTC)


 * The idea that children need to be protected from violent imagery is apparently a recent one. Consider Struwwelpeter, an 1845 international best-seller, which includes a girl who plays with matches and is burned to death and a boy who is cured of thumb-sucking by having his thumbs amputated with scissors. Alansplodge (talk) 11:33, 8 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Scaring kids away from doing risky things, and also drawing a stark line between good and bad behavior in general. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 11:50, 8 August 2021 (UTC)
 * For a 19th century example in a different genre, see Eric, or, Little by Little. --ColinFine (talk) 19:41, 9 August 2021 (UTC)
 * So the moral lesson is if others beat up on you, it's your own fault. Nowadays, the kid would probably come back to the school with an assault rifle or two. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:56, 9 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Nowadays, ghastlier rifles exist, but it's still almost as hard to find one near an English boarding school. InedibleHulk (talk) 20:19, 10 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Depends on the school though: if.... Iapetus (talk) 09:14, 11 August 2021 (UTC)