Mary Mary quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockle shells
And pretty maids all in a row.
I have been researching nursery rhymes - looking for fun things for Eloise to pronounce (working on her diction). Anyhow, I found this great site that has old nursery rhymes and gives their origins. Did you know that Mary is Mary Tudor or Bloody Mary? That silver bells and cockle shells were instruments of torture? and that a maiden was a guillotine. So, we Anglo Saxons do have barbaric origins. Here is the site http://www.rhymes.org.uk/mary_mary_quite_contrary.htm
3 comments:
I know that Ring Around the Rosie is about the Plague, and the attempted cures. "Ring around of rosies, pocket full of posies" were herbal cures carried on a person, and the "achoo, achoo, we all fall down" is when they didn't work. But I didn't know that this one was about Mary Tudor. Interesting.
I just watched a DVR'ed Ghost Whisperer and it was about the "urban myth" of Bloody Mary. I am quite intrigued by it now and would like to find out more about what actually happened to her.
And yes Franz, I may not want to go to Knott's Scary Farm but I'll watch Ghost Whisperer. Though I've had two taped for 2 weeks now and just watched them this morning because now Darin is home. I will not watch them at night unless he is here. Kooky--I know!
Heidi-
Mary Tudor was the first child of Henry the Eighth, and was kind of traumatized when he left her mom, Katherine of Aragon, for Anne Boleyn. He also made England Protestant, and she was Catholic. When she became queen after her brother died, she tried to restore Catholicism, and killed an awful lot of people along the way.
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