A fierce believer in Catholicism, her reign as queen-from 1553 to 1558-was marked by the execution of hundreds of Protestants. This popular English nursery rhyme, which reads like a solicitation for gardening advice, is actually a recounting of the homicidal nature of Queen Mary I of England, a.k.a. “Contrary” is one way to describe a murderous psychopath. Which we’re pretty sure isn’t a practice they teach you in architecture school. Oh, and that whole child sacrifice thing? That’s an idea that is also often debated (there’s no archaeological evidence to support it), but the theory goes that in order to keep London Bridge upright, its builders believed that it must be built on a foundation of human sacrifice, and that those same humans-mostly children-would help to watch over the bridge and maintain its sturdiness. (“Alleged” because some historians don’t believe that attack ever took place.) The song’s popularity around the world is often cited as further proof that it was the Vikings who created it, believing that they brought the tune to the many places they traveled.

More specifically: the alleged destruction of London Bridge at the hands of Olaf II of Norway some time in the early 1000s. But the most popular theory seems to be that first one. Depending on whom you ask, “London Bridge is Falling Down” could be about a 1014 Viking attack, child sacrifice, or the normal deterioration of an old bridge. But the original song wasn’t much better. In 2006, Fergie got saucy with some of this classic kid tune’s lyrics. When Parliament rejected his suggestion, he instead made sure that the volume was reduced on half- and quarter-pints, known as jacks and gills, respectively. The more likely possibility is that it’s an account of King Charles I’s attempt to reform the tax on liquid measures.

The only problem is that those events occurred nearly 30 years after “Jack and Jill” was first written. One of the most common theories surrounding the story’s origin is that it’s about France’s Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette, who were both found guilty of treason and subsequently beheaded. But its origins aren’t as clean-cut as you probably imagined. JACK AND JILL // 1765Īdmit it, you fooled around with the lyrics to “Jack and Jill” a bit yourself when you were younger, turning what you thought was an innocent poem into something a little bit naughty. In the original version, the narrator comes upon an old man “who wouldn’t say his prayers. But it’s actually a tale of religious persecution, during the days when Catholic priests would hide themselves in order to say their Latin-based prayers, a major no-no at the time-not even in the privacy of one’s own home.

It’s hard to imagine that any rhyme with the phrase “goosey goosey” in its title could be described as anything but feelgood. In 2011, reported on the proliferation of “Baa, Baa Rainbow Sheep” as an alternative. Its political correctness was called into question yet again in the latter part of the 20th century, with some schools banning it from being repeated in classrooms, and others simply switching out the word “black” for something deemed less offensive. Though most scholars agree that “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” is about the Great Custom, a tax on wool that was introduced in 1275, its use of the color black and the word “master” led some to wonder whether there was a racial message at its center. Yes, that fictional grande dame of kiddie poems has got a bit of a dark streak, as evidenced by the unexpectedly sinister theories surrounding the origins of these 11 well-known nursery rhymes. Lovecraft, Bram Stoker, and Mary Shelley tend to dominate the craft. In the canon of great horror writing, Stephen King, Edgar Allan Poe, H.P.

Ring around the rosie meaning