Scaring Kids One Nursery Rhyme at a Time
What’s the deal with scary and/or kid inappropriate stories, songs, and nursery rhymes?
To use a common example, Hansel and Gretel. This fairy tale is presented as a children’s bedtime story and it goes like this: Once upon a time (sounds nice) two kids are lured into the forest by a cannibalistic witch who captures them with the plan of eating them (after baking them in an oven). She fails (yay!) because one of the kids tricks her and kills her (oh). Sweet dreams!
Ok, admittedly, many of the original Brother’s Grimm Fairy Tales are dark. But the staying power of Hansel and Gretel (and Little Red Riding Hood too) as kids literature is surprising given their content.
Fine, Brothers Grimm = not for kids. But at least cute lullabies are still safe. Like this one.
Rock-a-bye baby
In the tree top.
When the wind blows
The cradle will rock.
When the bough breaks,
The cradle will fall.
And down will come Baby,
Cradle and all.
Wait, what?! Seeing as I had never paid attention to what was going on in this lullabye, I did a little research and discovered two things. First, comedian Tim Hawkins does a bit on this that’s better than this column so just go look that up.
Second, according to Wikipedia the rhyme either comes from observations about Native American tree cradle customs, an English family of 10 from the 1700s that lived in a tree with a branch serving as a cradle, or it’s a disguised reference to James the VII and II (not a typo) and the events leading up to the Glorious Revolution.
There are also several other theories. I can’t decide if nursery rhymes are delightfully more history-laden than they appear or if Wikipedia is just the worst.
The commonly repeated inaccuracy that Ring Around the Rosie was written about the black plague does suggest a broad appeal to reading too much into nursery rhymes. But is also means I can claim this misinformation as proof that once again adults are trying to frighten kids with nursery rhymes. It may have nothing to do with bubonic plague, but if we thought it did and sang it to kids anyway...
There does seem to be a conspiracy afoot regarding introducing babies to scary-to-kids things even beyond harrowing stories, songs, and pandemic rhymes though. Case in point: teddy bears. How did we decide the bear, you know that often large, unpredictable, and aggressive beast was the perfect cuddling companion of kids?
We have a baby swing that has three miniature stuffed bears attached to a mobile that rotates above it. Looking at this I’m struck with two thoughts: Are we trying to desensitize kids to bears? Or just trying to frighten them to sleep? No wonder babies wake up crying for no apparent reason. Floating bears, crashing cradles, wicked witches — oh my.