Am I the only one disturbed about this?

[*Eve*]

Nursey Ryhmes. Yes, you read right. Is it just me or were Nursery Rhymes a little scary. Think about it,

"Rock-a-bye baby on the tree top....." well we know what happens next. You pretty much have a flat baby.
And how about "Jack fell down and broke his crown....."
Which basically means he craked his scull and he's probably dead too.

What about Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater. Basically this guy was just a deadbeat.

Rub a Dub Dub......... well I won't even go there but you can all see what I'm getting at.
Is it a wonder our society is so out of whack. If we're raised on this no wonder everyone is crazy. Forget all the senseless violence on television and MTV and HBO. Mother Goose was one crazy lady.

Has anyone else ever pondered this or do I just have too much time on my hands right now.


[Edited by *Eve* on 01-20-2001 at 06:09 PM]

 

[Todd]

Nope I have long been disturbed by this and as a child i refused to allow my mother read such stories to me, instead I opted for a much more sensible choice of stories those written by Stephen King

 

[Ezzy]

Don't forget "old mother Hubbard"...

Promoting beastialiy.

Old mother Hubbard went to the cupboard,
to fetch her poor doggie a bone.

But as she bent over, Rover took over:
and gave her a bone of his own.




EZ http://cwm.ragesofsanity.com/s/cwm2/sleep.gif

 

[*Eve*]

Oh yea, I forgot that one Ezzy, thanks.

 

[*Jennifer-In-Flares*]

you know i read a bit about psychology and i think it's good fairy tales are a bit nasty. a young kid uses a fairy tale to vent anger at their mom (the 'witch') or whatever in a safe way. i think it's healthy. if you sanitise fairy tales you take the life away from your kids. *jenny*

 

[Ezzy]

BTW...

Humpty Dumpty was pushed.

That was no yoke.



EZ http://cwm.ragesofsanity.com/s/cwm2/sleep.gif

 

[Bushido71XS]

Not to mention they teach bad manners....

Take Miss Muffet:

Little Miss Muffet,
sat on her tuffet, eating her curds and whey.

Along came a spider,
he sat down beside her, and said:

"Hey! What's in the bowl bitch!"

 

[Celestiale]

I've actually read somewhere that some fairy tales and children's songs are actually based upon true events...

Here's a site that gives some info:

http://www.sca.org.au/bacchus_wood/origins_of_nursery_rhymes.html

scarrryyyyy

 

[*Jennifer-In-Flares*]

ring-a-ring of roses is all abou the black death. *jenny*

 

[Mustang Sally]

Nursery rhymes I can deal with. But fairy tales! I have a book of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales - truly frightening and sadistic stuff in there. I can't understand how they're suitable for children. More nightmares in there than any movie I've ever seen.

 

[*Eve*]

Re: BTW...

Humpty Dumpty was pushed.

That was no yoke.



EZ http://cwm.ragesofsanity.com/s/cwm2/sleep.gif

You are starting to scare me Ezzy.

 

[circe!]

Anne Sexton

You all should read Anne Sexton's book of poems "Transformations," inspired darkly by fairy tales. The one entitled Briar Rose gives me the chills.

Really, check it out!

 

[Weird Harold]

I have a book of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales - truly frightening and sadistic stuff in there. I can't understand how they're suitable for children.

The sad thing is, you probably have a "bowdlerized" version of Grimm's Fairy tales with all of the really violent and sexual stuff removed.

Fairy tales were never intended for children origianlly. They were "morality plays" for adults.

 

[Earthmuffin]

*warning, run-on sentences ahead*

As a child with a huge imagination the traditional fairy tales/nursery rhymes flipped my fritters.

As an adult I've been educated to understand that they were written at a time when political commentary in the wrong quarters could cost you your life. *shrug* Just another way of keeping track of the way ppl thought before CNN. *s*

 

[Todd]

posted for *Jennifer-In-Flames*

ok. this is my reply to eve's topic about fairy tales cause the computer won't let me post it. i tried 4 times. server hangup.

Nursery rhymes I can deal with. But fairy tales! I have a book of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales - truly frightening and sadistic stuff in there. I can't understand how they're suitable for children. More nightmares in there than any movie I've ever seen.

that's what i'm saying. it's good for kids that fairy tales are frightening. that's how they learn to deal with their difficult emotions like fear and anger in a safe way. if you censor the grimm fairy tales and things like that you stop kids learning how to deal with scary feelings which i think is bad. my friend corey reads her kid grimm stories and he's scared but he loves them. please don't deprive your kids of that. *jenny*

 

[*Jennifer-In-Flares*]

thankyou todd. I should get you to do all my posts. lol. *jenny*

 

[Mustang Sally]

Fairy tales were never intended for children origianlly. They were "morality plays" for adults.

That makes sense. Harold, you really do have "lots of answers!" So how did they mutate into children's stories?

 

[*Jennifer-In-Flares*]

did you know that cinderella is from a french story. the slipper was a metaphor for a pussy in the original. so prince charming went round fucking all the girlz in the neighborhood to find which one fitted him best. charming!!! i hope it wasn't really his foot he put in it. *jenny*

 

[Rosebud]

Ring aroung the rosie
pocket full of posies
ashes ashes
we all fall down

This represents the bubonic plague. Rings of rose color was where the skin was coming off
Posies were put in the pockets because the smell of rotting flesh was soo bad
they burned the dead bodies
and everyone was falling dead of this plague

how many of you used to play this game and have kids that have played it...not as much fun when you know the truth behind it

 

[Siren]

Yea, these rhymes freak me out big time

 

[*Jennifer-In-Flares*]

little miss muffet
sat on a tuffet
eating her curds and whey
along came a spider
and sat down beside her
and frightened miss muffet away

not as frightening as lizzie borden coming atcha with an axe but spiders creep me out. i'm always spilling my curds and whey *jenny*

 

[Weird Harold]

Fairy tales were never intended for children origianlly. They were "morality plays" for adults.

That makes sense. Harold, you really do have "lots of answers!" So how did they mutate into children's stories?

I don't remember that answer off the top of my head. I do however remember where the answer is, I just don't have a copy handy.

The answer is in the preface to the first of the modern fairly tale collections edited by Datlow & Windling. (Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling I think.) There are five ore six of them available through your local library or bookstore. The collections are modern short stories based on traditional fairy tales -- some very good short stories for adults.

In the preface to the first volume, whichever one is the fairy tale scholar (Windling?) details how they got bowdlerized and made "acceptable" for children during the Victorian age and how the short stories collections are intended to give fairy tales back to adults.

 

[CRaZy]

Now Disney - that's scary

Fairy Tales were originally morality tales for adults. Eventually wandering bards adapted them and they became children's stories. Grimm and the likes wrote these traditional tales down. They are scribes rather than story tellers.

Some fairy tales and traditional stories are scary. Of course discretion is needed given the age and emotional development of a child. The REALLY scary stories are those which have been sanitised and made politcally correct. They even give me nightmares - stories of the Three Bears in which Father Bear does all the cooking, a version of Snow White in which she rejects the handsome Prince in favour of a career in New York (I am not lying here) and so on.

The biggest industry in destroying these stories and consequently part of our heritage is Disney. These were morality tales. Good verses evil. Teaching kids that doing the right thing will be rewarded. Not a bad message. If you watch anything Disney from Pocahontus to Snow White, by removing the "violence", they have removed the moral. I find that far more scary than all the woodcutters in all the woods in all the world trying to cut out Snow White's heart.

 

[Closet Desire]

Welcome to my world...

...Victorian and slightly earlier literature that is.

Hi WH...fancy meeting you here!

Strange as it may seem many of these stories were indeed intended for children. The story Twinkle Twinkle Little Star for example.

Written by Jane Taylor at a time when Evangelical writers becan to recognise that not all child death-beds were "appreciated" as the work of God. She and her sister Ann, daughters of a dissenting minister published in 1806 Hymns for Infant Minds which won the praise of Scott, Southey, Browning, et al and was widely popular despite the high proportion of poems with titles such as "The Day of Judgement", "A Child's Grave", or "For a Dying Child".

It was a very different world then and earlier, when the Fairy Tales were written. I chose a nearer time because we have more in common and it's more recognizable. But as an earlier writer mentioned...death was widespread from cholera, bubonic plague, tuberculosis and low fever (caused by decaying bodies in churchyards). Germs were not recognised as the cause of this until 1876 so people desperately coined rituals and sought the magic scent of flowers to hold the "vapours" away. How you died was sometimes more important than how you lived. For example there was the Evangelical way of death.

Anyway, I had a chance to examine an original copy of Hymns for Infant Minds at the Bronte Parsonage. It was given as a gift to a friend of one of the girls when she attended boarding school...a school where about half the girls died their first year at school, including two of the Bronte sisters. The book was given as an award for good spelling. It was considered good form to teach children about death because it was so commonplace.

Well, I don't mean to bore, but my point is that the stories made perfect sense to the people whose times they represent. They are bizarre, even twisted, in the 21st century because we can't even comprehend what lives were like.

Oh, my references were from Robert Cecil's "The Masks of Death: Changing Attitudes in the 19th century" (1991). And, no, it doesn't disturb me...it's just history. At least the stories in our kids hands have been heavily edited.

[Edited by Closet Desire on 01-21-2001 at 03:55 AM]

 

[*Eve*]

did you know that cinderella is from a french story. the slipper was a metaphor for a pussy in the original. so prince charming went round fucking all the girlz in the neighborhood to find which one fitted him best. charming!!! i hope it wasn't really his foot he put in it. *jenny*

No wonder cinderella lived happily ever after.
I believe I once heard where in the story of Sleeping beaty, after the prince awakens her with a kiss they go live together and have two children, and they are together for some years and then, Sleeping beauty comes to find out that the Prince was already married to this wicked Queen( and I guess I would be wicked to if my husband was a bigamist), and she tried to kill Sleeping Beaty and her kids so they had to go in to the desert to live. I think that if I got the original version of the stories, I would have been a depressed little kid.