The Cellar - View Single Post - How many nursery rhymes do you know by heart?

Sundae · 05-30-2010, 01:46 PM

Here is where I admit that when I worked in marketing I used to frequently dip into a staff copy of marvellous book about nursery rhymes by Iona and Peter Opie (okay I did have to look their names up). In my defence that was 15 years ago and I only read it because I was already interested.

We had a lot of second hand books as pre-schoolers. Mum was determined we would read before we got to school, but money was tight. So we learned a lot of quite old nursery rhymes. Also, there was approx 1 hour of children's TV in those days, so a lot more time for soaking up traditional material.

Some things I've learned: Humpty Dumpty for example was never an egg, it was a cannon.
And beware of those who tell you ring a ring a roses was about the plague - it predated that significantly.
Or that Sing a song of sixpence was a pirate recruiting rhyme - that was a snopes spoof.

05-30-2010, 01:46 PM	#7
Sundae polaroid of perfection Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: West Yorkshire Posts: 24,185	Here is where I admit that when I worked in marketing I used to frequently dip into a staff copy of marvellous book about nursery rhymes by Iona and Peter Opie (okay I did have to look their names up). In my defence that was 15 years ago and I only read it because I was already interested. We had a lot of second hand books as pre-schoolers. Mum was determined we would read before we got to school, but money was tight. So we learned a lot of quite old nursery rhymes. Also, there was approx 1 hour of children's TV in those days, so a lot more time for soaking up traditional material. Some things I've learned: Humpty Dumpty for example was never an egg, it was a cannon. And beware of those who tell you ring a ring a roses was about the plague - it predated that significantly. Or that Sing a song of sixpence was a pirate recruiting rhyme - that was a snopes spoof.