 Lessons Learned Nursery Rhymes and Once Upon A Time By Teresa Martin-- @Teresa__Martin Nursery Rhymes are a form of verse that after hundreds of years still permeate the lives of little children. One can go to just about any pre-school in the English-speaking world and start singing the first line of “Baa Baa Black Sheep” and immediately the children as one will start belting it out like the chorus of U2’s “In the Name of Love.” Then, when they reach the line “three bags full,” you’ll likely behold a sea of three little fingers raised with the gusto of Katniss saluting Rue. Yet, as familiar as nursery rhymes are, finding the origins of them is elusive. Little is certain from where they came except the fact that they have been a staple of children’s lives for as far back as ten generations. This is credibly asserted by Iona and Peter Opie, authors of The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (1). In this work it is hypothesized that nursery rhymes are “fragments of ballads or of folk songs, . . . . remnants of ancient custom and ritual” and “last echoes of long-forgotten evil.” Like fairy tales, the source materials were likely not intended for children (3).
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