Pipers and Plagues

Today is Mother Goose Day.

Most children have a book of Mother Goose nursery rhymes on their shelf. I wore mine out, and I have bought at least one copy for my brother’s children. The origin of Mother Goose is murky, and the term “Mother Goose nursery rhymes” is inaccurate. Whoever Mother Goose was, she didn’t invent a lot of these rhymes, but they are all gathered under her name, which is convenient.

Do you have a favorite nursery rhyme? Two favorites of mine (not my number one though) are historical, morbid, and count as exercise.

Here is one of them.

Ring-a-ring-a-roses,
A pocket full of posies,
A-tishoo! A-tishoo!
We all fall down.

(The above version is what I found printed everywhere. However, it is not how I sang it. Below is my version.)

Ring-a-round the rosies,
A pocket full of posies,
Ashes! Ashes!
We all fall down.

Here is another favorite of mine.

London Bridge is falling down,
Falling down, falling down,
London Bridge is falling down,
My fair Lady.

Both Ring Around the Rosies and London Bridge Is Falling Down are sung while moving around in a circle and then falling down. I like the last part. From a young age, thanks in part to Disney cartoons, I knew that London Bridge Is Falling Down had to do with the Great London Fire, and that Ring Around the Rosies was about the Black Death. That only made the rhymes more fun.

My favorite nursery rhyme did not originate with Mother Goose but is found in her collection.

PETER PIPER
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers;
A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked.
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?

Peter Piper, a common tongue twister, was first published in John Harris’s Peter Piper’s Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation in 1813. I could say this poem perfectly from a young age and probably drove my family crazy by repeating it often.

Do you have a favorite Mother Goose nursery rhyme? Have you shared these poems with the new generation? I hope they last for centuries to come.