Young Writers Society

I think it was...

little bunny foo foo was riding through the forest, picking up the field mice and boppin' them on the head...

Or little rabbit I supposes

Hm. I thought there was more to Foo Foo than that.

And I seriously doubt they put violence into nursery rhymes because they want kids to think violence is funny. These feelings about violence in songs and children's stories is relatively very recent. Violence is just a part of our society, and I don't think it does kids any favours by pretending it doesn't exist by only ever letting them watch Dora the Explorer and cartoons where the most pressing conflict is about what to get Fluffy Bunny for her birthday, or where they have annoyingly overt, preachy lessons about lying, stealing, and the importance of being kind to each other. To take a page from Mark Twain's book, if you want your work to have a lasting effect, you can't overtly teach or preach, but rather do it covertly in the context of a story.

Besides, I think kids can handle a lot more than adults today give them credit for. I mean, there is a Canadian book that has a ritual sacrafice in it, where they rip the characters heart out, and they market that to kids as young as eight. Okay, so the characters are bats, but still, the scene is described rather graphically.

Here mine are Goosy Goosy Gander about somone hanging themselves,Rock a Bye Baby about black people getting hung and Little miss Muffet don't ask

*sings*
Hickory Dickory Dock!
The mouse ran up the clock!
The poor little thing,
Got caught in a spring,
Squishity squishity squash!!!
*ends singing*

Ok, not the real version, but I perfer it.

Yeah, Ring a Ring a Rosey is about the black death/bubonic plague:

Ring a ring a rosey -- read and black spots that appear on body of infected
Pocket full of poseys -- people thought certain flowers and herbs could stop the disease and carried them around with them
Atishoo! Atishoo! -- sneezing ... up blood I think. Coughing up blood was one of the last stages in the disease before ...
We all fall down! -- we all die.

What a lovely rhyme!!!

But I do think little kiddies can handle a little more than they're given credit for. Ages ago, as has been said, little boys were sent to war, young girls were married off to old men. But then, people didn't live as long either. I had heard that Jesus' mother Mary was probably about 12 or 14 too when she had Jesus. The Spartans made their kids live like (actually, worse than) warriors when they were very little. They had to do things like kill each other and sleep with nothing but thistles to keep them warm and all kinds of nice things before they were even accepted into society.

What disgusts me about fairy tales is that the goodies are ALWAYS pretty, and kind and marry a charming prince (in the case of the girls/women) or a beautiful princess (in the case of boys/men). ANd then the baddies are ALWAYS ugly and perfectly evil and jelous and ... it goes on. Not a good lesson for life. At least the violence prepares them for something that actually comes into play in life.

Well, fairy-tales were deceptively rather simple, but don't be decieved by most North American retellings. If you know where to look, you can find anthologies and collections that haven't been screwed up by the Grimms wanting Protestant bourgoise of Germany. Some of them are recent retellings that revisit the older tradition of folklore.

Éloeré wrote:What disgusts me about fairy tales is that the goodies are ALWAYS pretty, and kind and marry a charming prince (in the case of the girls/women) or a beautiful princess (in the case of boys/men). ANd then the baddies are ALWAYS ugly and perfectly evil and jelous and ... it goes on. Not a good lesson for life.

I couldn't agree more.

But seriously the only reason people back then made up nursery rhymes so messed up was to scare the kids to not to that kind of stuff. So the parents could sleep well without the kids bopping up everywhere, bothering the adults.

Except that you can't take it too literally. Their physical appearances are a metephore for their inner beauty/ugliness. Besides, there are many "Looks Can Be Decieving" stories out there. Smart kids understand these stories are just pretend. Besides, there are so many bad messages in every other form of media that even if these stories did effect children that way, they kind of get lost in the mix.

Except that you can't take it too literally. Their physical appearances are a metephore for their inner beauty/ugliness. Besides, there are many "Looks Can Be Decieving" stories out there. Smart kids understand these stories are just pretend. Besides, there are so many bad messages in every other form of media that even if these stories did effect children that way, they kind of get lost in the mix.

Yeah, but that only works if you know about meatphor. Little kids are pretty literal.

Besides, the "Looks can be Deciving" kiddies stories and rhymes tend to have foxes (or other animals) as the ones who look pretty, but are mean. That just teaches the litral kiddies that foxes are evil too, and that you shouldn't trust them.
Or at least to make them give you their half of the bargain in advance, which is a good lesson for dealing with drunk parents too.

Maybe so, but personally, I believe that the intended lessons of the stories are more memorable.
Little Red Cap: Don't talk to stangers.
Cinderella: perserverance and kindness will eventually be rewarded, and cruelty will be punished. There are numerous stories that have that lesson.
All the many versions of Tom Thumb: You can do anything you want as long as you try, no matter how small you are.

And not all of the looks can be decieving stories are like that. I honestly can't think of any at the moment, and I read these stories a lot. Think of all the stories where the character is under a curse to look like a monster, like "Beauty and the Beast." And there's "Snow White and Red Rose", where the prince was disguised as a bear, I believe. In My Little Pony, I recall a story where the beautiful characters were the enemy and the ugly ones were the good guys. In the movie, an ugly group of beings helped rescue one of the characters.

But you do have a point about the stories teaching people that wolves are evil. It's not generally an animal we think of being on the endangered species list, but they are dying out. However, even real foxes have been known to be tricksters.

*shurgs* that's just animal nature. Foxes aren't being tricky for the sake of hurting someone else, they're doing it to survive.



And I certainly never saw any of the hidden meaning in any fariy tales ... no matter how obvious ... and still don't think "it means this" when reading them at the age of 15. So, that one might be person related. Not sure.

"My Little Pony"? Wouldn't have a clue about that ... never ever seen any "my little pony" stories, I wasn't a horsie girl.