Mother Goose Origins

---Rock-a-bye-baby, on the tree-top…
Some people believe: It’s a lesson in humility. In fact, it first appeared in print about 1765, in a volume called Mother Goose’s Melody, accompanied by the note: “This may serve as a warning to the Proud and the Ambitious, who climb so high that they generally fall at last.”
Actually: The cradle is probably just a cradle. According to tradition, it was written by a Pilgrim who came to America on the Mayflower. He was “struck by the American Indian practice of hanging birchmark cradles on the branches of trees, where they rocked in the wind.” Actually, since people in the Old World also used wind-rocked cradles, “Rock-a-bye baby” may even predate the Mayflower.

---Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall…
Some people believe: Mr. Dumpty was Richard III, who was killed after he fell from his horse in battle…or that he represents a high-born noble in Richard’s time who fell from the Kings favor.
Actually: It’s probably just a riddle. Today everyone knows Humpty is an egg, but thousands of years ago, when the rhyme is believed to have first appeared, it would have been a challenge to figure out. Nearly identical riddle-rhymes appeared in Germany (Humpelken-Pumpelken), France (Boule, Boule), Sweden (Thille, Lille), Finland (Hillerin-Lillerin) and other European countries. Experts guess that it was during the 18th century, when illustrations of Humpty began to appear, that he became known as a character rather than a riddle. By the end of the 1700’s the term was so well known that it meant, “a short clumsy person of either sex.”

---Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye…
Some people believe: the King is Henry VIII; the queen is his first wife, Catherine of Aragon; and the maid is Anne Boleyn, Henry’s second wife-whose beheading is predicted in the line, “along came a blackbird and snapped off her nose.” The blackbirds are black-robed monks of the monasteries Henry dissolved.
Actually: The rhyme probably commemorates a recipe found in a 1549 Italian cookbook, translated into English in 1598 as Epulario, or, the Italian Banquet. The recipe gives instructions on how to make pies containing live birds. When the pies were cut, the birds would fly out-“a party favor guaranteed to enliven any feast.”

---Ring around the rosie, a pocket full of posies…
Some people believe: It refers to the Great Plague of London in 1665 or the Black Death of the 14th century. “Ring around the rosie” is the red rash that afflicted plague victims, posies are the herbs carried to ward off infection. “All fall down,” of course, is what happens when the plague strikes.
Actually: As intriguing as this sounds, most experts now discount it. The oldest known printed version of the rhyme is from 1790, more than 100 years after its supposed origin-and it’s American, not English. More likely, the rhyme originated as a dancing game. One American expert, Philip Hiscock, suggests that it may have been invented as a way to avoid the ban on dancing enforced by some Protestant sects in England and America.

Excerpts taken from Uncle John’s 13th Edition All-Purpose Extra Strength Bathroom Reader, pp. 329-30