LAWRIE McFARLANE

Some old nursery rhymes are very dark; what were parents thinking?

Y ou have to wonder, out of what dark recesses of the human mind did this nursery rhyme arise: “Ring-a-ring o’ rosies, a pocket full of posies, a-tishoo! a-tishoo! We all fall down.”

The rhyme is generally believed to be an allusion to the Black Death, which produced ring-shaped lesions on the skin, a hacking cough and, ultimately, death. The “posies” were herb bundles that people carried with them to ward off the disease (or so they hoped).

But here’s the thing. This grim concoction was taught to little children, for reasons that seem unintelligible today. Why would you want to burden three and four year olds with such a sinister thought?

Another example: “Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? With silver bells and cockle shells, and pretty maids all in a row.” An innocent piece of poetry perhaps?

According to one reading, the Mary in question is Queen Mary I of England (also known as Bloody Mary) who is believed to have ordered the executions of several hundred people.

Silver bells and cockle shells were torture devices used to skin people alive. And the pretty maids all in a row might have been a jibe at her numerous miscarriages.

But still, the same question. Why would parents teach their children such blood-curdling stuff?

Then there were the three blind mice who had their tails cut off with a carving knife. By some accounts the mice were a trio of Protestant bishops who tried to overthrow Bloody Mary and were burned at the stake for their pains. The reference to blindness might have had something to do with their religious beliefs.

I keep having to say “it might have been,” and “by some accounts,” because there are varying interpretations of these and other rhymes. But it seems indisputable that kids in earlier times were fed some very dark thoughts.

There’s a distinction here worth making. Just about every ancient culture had its share of folk takes, some of them hair-raising. J.R.R. Tolkien made inspired use of Nordic fables about elves and trolls in his Lord of the Rings saga.

Yet talk about scary forests and fearsome wild beasts might have evolved as a legitimate way of cautioning children about threats to their safety. Kids are more likely to remember colourful warnings than the bland variety.

However, this doesn’t explain what lay behind the more barbaric nursery rhymes, whose content appears to lack any constructive or cautionary purpose.

One theory is that our current view of children is really quite a recent one. Prior to the 19th century, kids weren’t treated with the same regard and love that we take for granted.

You had six- and seven-year-olds working down mines, or slaving away in dark, satanic mills. Young boys were used as chimney sweeps and not a few went on to contract cancer caused by exposure to soot.

And interestingly, children’s clothes in those days were in large part scaled down adult attire, as if kids were merely a smaller version of the grownups around them.

In this view of things, Europe at that time was a grim and miserable place. Life expectancy in 17th-century Britain was about 35 years, and nearly half of all kids died before they reached adulthood.

Medicine was largely ineffectual, infectious diseases ran rampant and public executions — which parents took their children to watch — were savage affairs.

If adults were drained of whatever inner warmth they possessed, perhaps this bred a form of indifference in which children were viewed as expendable, or, at any rate, not worth investing much hope in.

I admit this is pure speculation. Yet some explanation is owing of the darkness that inhabits childhood nursery rhymes.