For some silly reason, a rhyme that we used in elementary school to torment others popped into my head last week.

I often have good songs running through my brain, but this one was strange. It did, however, make me think. It went:

Jimmy and Mary sitting in a tree
K - I - S - S - I - N - G !
First comes love
Then comes marriage
Then comes Mary
With a baby carriage

Why that jumped out of memory, I can’t imagine. But as I thought about the rhyme, I was frustrated at the way it reinforced so many stereotypes.

The most obvious is that it is always the girl who is pushing the carriage. Why not the guy? When I was a child, it was assumed that women look after kids. Change is coming in that area, but slowly.

The rhyme also reinforces the idea that sex is intended for procreation. That’s the goal. And in that world, it was always a guy and a girl.  

I wouldn’t mention this except it got me thinking about what other underlying messages were in the songs we learned as little children.

Old MacDonald Had A Farm did teach about the animals that live on a farm and something like the sounds they make.

However, each time we prepare to name one of the creatures, we say, and on that farm he ... Not she. Not they, which is now an acceptable way to indicate third person without specifying gender, and accurate in that the whole family usually participates in farming.

But no. Farmers, we were told, were men.

As I explored some of the nursery rhymes and their meaning, I came across one I did not know:

Lavender's blue, dilly, dilly,
Lavender's green,
When I am king, dilly, dilly,
You shall be queen.

Typical. The man gets to choose. And that would be true if you only chanted the first verse. The second does sound aristocratic as men are sent to work while the two stay warm. But then comes a different verse:

I love to dance, dilly, dilly,
I love to sing,
When I am queen, dilly, dilly,
You'll be my king.

Finally a little agency in the woman’s hands that is reinforced in the last verse:

Who told me so, dilly, dilly,
Who told me so?
I told myself, dilly, dilly,
I told me so.

Itsy Bitsy Spider is a rhyme that I remember enjoying as a child. It’s the finger movements that imitate the spider’s climb that make it fun. Then, hands tumble down, until the sun comes out, and the spider starts the climb all over again. Encourages perseverance I suppose.

Another rhyme that little kids enjoy is Ring Around The Rosey. I never knew what a posey was when I joined the circle, and none of us knew that it told the story of the plague and death. It was just fun to all fall down. We learned it was okay to fall down. Not a bad thing to learn.

The Jack And Jill rhyme does not make falling sound safe.

Jack bumps or breaks his crown, hitting his head hard. And Jill has to follow him in the tumble back down the hill. No independence there.

The thing that annoys me most about the rhyme, however, is that they go uphill to get water. Over to the other valley maybe. Down to a valley, yes. Across to a well, okay. But uphill? Only put in to make the accident possible.

Baa, Baa, Black Sheep seems to have an okay message: the wool gets shared. But if we dig into the history, it is about taxation: the king gets a third, the church gets a third, and the farmer – just a little boy – only gets to keep a third.

One I remember loving as a child goes:

Twinkle, twinkle, little star
How I wonder what you are!
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star
How I wonder what you are!

I still love thinking about the stars. And I discovered a second verse:

Then the traveller in the dark
Thanks you for your tiny spark.
We would not see which way to go,
If you did not twinkle so.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star
How I wonder what you are.

A bit of gratitude finds its way into that rhyme.

Cathy Hird lives on the traditional territory of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation.

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