- It is enough to make most parents blush with embarrassment.
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- Britain's most popular nursery rhymes, recited by generations
of parents to their children, are teeming with references to bed-hopping
royals and teenage sex, according to a book on the origins of 24 playground
ditties.
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- While Jack and Jill may seem innocuous enough in their
attempt to fetch water, they are in fact preoccupied with losing their
virginity, says Chris Roberts, a social historian who has traced the adult
stories behind the nursery rhymes. Jill possibly becomes pregnant and there
are regrets later.
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- "The interesting bit is that, having successfully
'lost his crown', it's Jack who runs off rapidly - probably to tell his
mates what happened," said Mr Roberts, 37, author of Heavy Words Lightly
Thrown.
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- In an alternative second verse, the sexual association
of the rhyme becomes more blatant. Instead of his head, Jack has a different
part of his anatomy patched up with vinegar and brown paper.
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- The rhyme "Goosey, goosey gander, where do you wander?
Upstairs and downstairs and in my lady's chamber" can be read as alluding
to the spread of venereal disease - known as "goose bumps" because
of the swelling.
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- It also tackles a row between Henry VIII and the Catholic
Church, which owned the land upon which brothels were operating and profited
hugely.
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- Mr Roberts, a librarian at East London University, said
his book came out of research he undertook for a series of walking tours
around London.
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- While people already know that Ring a Ring o' Roses refers
to the rash displayed by sufferers at the time of the Great Plague, it
is less well known that Oranges and Lemons, a guide to the City of London,
doubles as a lewd wedding song, he said.
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- The line "here comes a candle to light you to bed",
for example, is an apparent reference to the bride tempting her new bridegroom,
while "here comes a chopper to chop off your head" alludes to
the woman losing her virginity, or "maiden head".
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- "Some nursery rhymes were clearly adult rhymes that
were sung to children because they were the only rhymes an adult knew,"
said Mr Roberts. "Others were deliberately created as a simple way
to tell children a story or give them information. Religion, sex, money
and social issues are all common themes."
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- Mary, Mary Quite Contrary contains a reference to "cockles"
- cuckolds - in the promiscuous court of Mary, Queen of Scots. The Grand
Old Duke of York is about a former Duke's inept military strategy against
the French.
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- Although some rhymes appear to have their origins in
the Middle Ages, their golden age was the period between the Tudor monarchs
and the Stuarts. Increased freedom of speech, literacy and communication
eventually did away with the need for allegorical rhymes.
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- Then came the Victorians, who viewed childhood as an
innocent state. "During the 19th century the rhymes were increasingly
written up, illustrated and sold as collections for children. They became
more accessible, but less potent," said Mr Roberts.
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- Many of today's children's songs are deliberately composed
as such, making the roots of the next generation's nursery rhymes more
anodyne. However, the need for "tribal chanting" is still present
and most obvious in football songs, which Mr Roberts claims could be tomorrow's
lullabies.
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- "They are about the only thing that are 'composed'
anonymously and known and sung by thousands of people. I know fathers who
croon football songs to help their children sleep."
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- Foot & Mouth Publications, the book's publisher,
said it "should not be bought for children unless their parents want
them to ask tricky questions about such things as pre-marital sex".
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- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004.
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