I'm on a roll here. Yesterday, I posted about Sesame Street. Today, I want to rant about nursery rhymes. In particular, this one:
I won't re-write the words to the original of this particular nursery rhyme, because I assume everyone in the English speaking world knows this song. But over at the Mother Country, someone from the BBC decided to change the last line of this famous nursery rhyme to:
"All the King's Horses and the King's Men,
Made Humpty Dumpty happy again".
The BBC changed it for 'creative' purposes. I call it ridiculous. Personally, I don't think children are traumatised when hearing this particular nursery rhyme or any other nursery rhyme.
But there's one thing that a lot of people forgot to ask when listening to this. Just one.
No where in the original Humpty Dumpty lyric, did it mention that Humpty Dumpty is an egg!
Why did we assume that Mr Humpty Dumpty was an egg in the first place? Did the part where Humpty Dumpty "had a great fall" and "Cannot put Humpty Dumpty together again" imply that it was an egg? Just because you couldn't put something together, doesn't mean that it's an egg.
For those in favour of changing the Humpty Dumpty lyrics because the current one scares children, guess what Humpty Dumpty is first before jumping the gun.
Rant over,
5ft0
4 comments:
oh gah! The original nursery rhyme never scared me or anyone else I know.. it's silly to change it now. In my opinion.
Kids can have quite dark imaginations anyway what good is over the top censorship....
X
I know the answer to this!!!!!
It's bc the rhyme was originally a riddle and the answer to the riddle is an egg!
(pretty lame riddle if you ask me)
He was drawn as an egg in the original illustrations of Alice in Wonderland...
Oh wow - you're quite a trivial pursuit buff Sarah Hannah!
But yeah, lame riddle...
Children are being so guarded these days. Parents place them first in EVERYTHING, at least here in America, it's ridiculous, to the point where you can't tell who is the child and who is the adult. Society is so bent on making everything PC, to save chidrens minds, but I think this way of thinking is sending us all the he** in a hand basket. The whole point of these rhymes are to let children understand that not everything goes their way in the end, that sometimes you have to work at it, and sometimes people say "no" and mean it.
Most nursery rhymes and fairy tales are dark and grimm-but they teach a lesson.
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