Caldecott Monday: The Rooster Crows

[osprey_archer]

Ring around a' rosies
Pocket full of posies.
Sweet bread, rye bread,
Squat!

The Rooster Crows: A Book of American Rhymes and Jingles is a very odd book. It's probably inevitable that in a book of nursery rhymes some of the rhymes won't be as I learned them, but nonetheless some of the rhymes in here seem almost bizarrely wrong. What is up with their version of "Ring around the rosie"? Why is there all this bread in there all of a sudden, and who on earth would replace the good homely command "We all fall down" with "Squat"?

Also, the illustrations are full of sly, sulky, bad-tempered children. And not just for the rhymes that seem to call for it, either - and it's surprising how many vicious nursery rhymes there are - but even seemingly sweet rhymes like "Star bright, star light, first star I've seen tonight" is illustrated by a grim-eyed girl gazing at the stars with her brow drawn low and angry over her eye. That star will give her the wish she wishes tonight, or she'll know why.

The children are so very cranky that it becomes sort of funny, but at the same time it made me feel strangely uneasy. Why are these nursery rhyme children all in such bad tempers? Do they know something I don't?

Comments

[lycoris.livejournal.com]

Okay, that version definietely is weird. And "Squat" doesn't even fit the rhytham. Bizarre.

*laughs about grumpy, angry children in nursery rhyme books* It does seem strange... perhaps they're trying to capture a weird, dark tone for some reason? It often happens in nursey rhyme and fairy story books, especially these days, even when it does seem unwarranted ...

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

This book is more than sixty years old, so either the Dark Nursery Rhyme craze is older than I thought... or perhaps it's not a craze at all, but just a perennial truth of human nature that some of us want our nursery rhymes and fairy tales to be dark, man, dark.