General Chat

Many Nursery Rhymes refer to historical event and places.

Oranges and Lemons is about churches in London.

http://www.rhymes.org.uk/oranges_and_lemons.htm

Ring a ring of roses - the dreaded pox. :-0

Little Jack Horner.

In debtors prison and had deeds to prove his solvency smuggled in to cell to free him . A plot hatched by so called relations to claim his estate

I thought Little Jack Horner was about the dissolution of the monasteries and the Bishop of Glastonbury.

I will have to look at that one again Ken as that is what I read somewhere :-S

EDIT I stand corrected Ken you are right. :-D

Ring a roses is surely about the plague

Goosey Goosey Gander is about religion, it's about priests when Catholics hid the priests in priest holes and people not praying the Protestant way.

Old Mother Hubbard is not about a woman but mocking Cardinal Thomas Wolsey and his failure to get Henry Vlll's divorce.

"I had a little nut tree " some think is about the Tudors but others doubt that as nutmegs were not discovered until the seventeenth century.

It's debatable, Pat.

The plague, apparently, came after the rhyme. Also, the symptoms mentioned in the rhyme do not fit with the symptoms of the plague.

Black Death is another possibility and I've always thought the symptoms (ring of roses) described something like ringworm!

Take your pick because, apparently, even the scholars can't confirm it. :-D :-D :-D