By Cherysh Madeira
Did you think that your favorite bedtimes stories would help you sleep without nightmares? Wrong. These stories will mess up your childhood! Mother Goose was never as innocent as we assumed. Her stories are based off of things as simple as a war cannon falling off a wall to the horrific story of an abusive mother with a few too many kids.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the kings horses and all the kings men, couldn’t put Humpty together again. Many illustrations depict Humpty Dumpty as an egg, but I don’t recall ever reading where he actually was one. Where exactly does it say he’s an egg? For all we know Humpty Dumpty could have been some poor guy who lost his balance while sitting on a castle wall.
Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown. And Jill came tumbling after. By itself it’s a little scary; it talks about two kids we all assumed to be siblings going uphill to get some water then poor little Jack falls down and cracks his skull! Some people believe it’s the sad story about King Louis XVI’s beheading which was followed by the same treatment to Marie Antoinette during the French Revolution.
There was an old woman who lived in a shoe. She had so many children she didn’t know what to do. She gave them some broth without any bread. She whipped them all soundly and put them to bed. Sounds like an innocent old woman who has too many children. Think about it a little harder. She gave them some broth without any bread. So she only gives her kids some soup without anything else to fill them up. No rice or bread or anything. She’s pretty much starving her children! She whipped them all soundly… There is no denying that this line doesn’t sound at least a little abusive.
Ring around the rosies. A pocketful of posies. Ashes to ashes. We all fall down. This has got to be the most well known nursery rhyme from our kindergarten days. We would hold hands and skip in circle while singing the innocent rhyme. The poem is actually about the Bubonic Plague. The first line is supposed to represent the sores and the rings around them that the infected people had. The next line was supposed to insinuate the flowers people would carry in their pockets to mask the smell of death. Ashes to ashes. We all fall down. Well that’s just messed up on it’s own.
Try to remember these horrifying truths when you’re tucking your kids into bed in the future and they ask for a bedtime story. It might be better to just stick with good old Winnie the Pooh instead of any of these disturbing tales, but that silly ol’ honey-loving bear has some dark secrets of his own too.
Photo Courtesy of: history.org
Did you think that your favorite bedtimes stories would help you sleep without nightmares? Wrong. These stories will mess up your childhood! Mother Goose was never as innocent as we assumed. Her stories are based off of things as simple as a war cannon falling off a wall to the horrific story of an abusive mother with a few too many kids.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the kings horses and all the kings men, couldn’t put Humpty together again. Many illustrations depict Humpty Dumpty as an egg, but I don’t recall ever reading where he actually was one. Where exactly does it say he’s an egg? For all we know Humpty Dumpty could have been some poor guy who lost his balance while sitting on a castle wall.
Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown. And Jill came tumbling after. By itself it’s a little scary; it talks about two kids we all assumed to be siblings going uphill to get some water then poor little Jack falls down and cracks his skull! Some people believe it’s the sad story about King Louis XVI’s beheading which was followed by the same treatment to Marie Antoinette during the French Revolution.
There was an old woman who lived in a shoe. She had so many children she didn’t know what to do. She gave them some broth without any bread. She whipped them all soundly and put them to bed. Sounds like an innocent old woman who has too many children. Think about it a little harder. She gave them some broth without any bread. So she only gives her kids some soup without anything else to fill them up. No rice or bread or anything. She’s pretty much starving her children! She whipped them all soundly… There is no denying that this line doesn’t sound at least a little abusive.
Ring around the rosies. A pocketful of posies. Ashes to ashes. We all fall down. This has got to be the most well known nursery rhyme from our kindergarten days. We would hold hands and skip in circle while singing the innocent rhyme. The poem is actually about the Bubonic Plague. The first line is supposed to represent the sores and the rings around them that the infected people had. The next line was supposed to insinuate the flowers people would carry in their pockets to mask the smell of death. Ashes to ashes. We all fall down. Well that’s just messed up on it’s own.
Try to remember these horrifying truths when you’re tucking your kids into bed in the future and they ask for a bedtime story. It might be better to just stick with good old Winnie the Pooh instead of any of these disturbing tales, but that silly ol’ honey-loving bear has some dark secrets of his own too.
Photo Courtesy of: history.org