Pop Goes The Weasel is an apparently nonsensical rhyme that, upon subsequent inspection, reveals itself to in fact be about poverty, pawnbroking, the minimum wage – and hitting the Eagle Tavern on London’s City Road. A lot of children's literature has a very dark origin,” explained Lerer to Today.com. “Nursery rhymes are part of long-standing traditions of parody and a popular political resistance to high culture and royalty.” Indeed, in a time when to caricature royalty or politicians was punishable by death, nursery rhymes proved a potent way to smuggle in coded or thinly veiled messages in the guise of children's entertainment. In largely illiterate societies, the catchy sing-song melodies helped people remember the stories and, crucially, pass them on to the next generation. Whatever else they may be, nursery rhymes are a triumph of the power of oral history. And the children merrily singing them to this day remain oblivious to the meanings contained within. Since the 14th Century, actually. That’s when the earliest nursery rhymes seem to date from, although the ‘golden age’ came later, in the 18th Century, when the canon of classics that we still hear today emerged and flourished. The first nursery rhyme collection to be printed was Tommy Thumb's Song Book, around 1744 ; a century later Edward Rimbault published a nursery rhymes collection, which was the first one printed to include notated music –although a minor-key version of Three Blind Mice can be found in Thomas Ravenscroft's folk-song compilation Deuteromelia, dating from 1609. Row, row, row your boat, Gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, Life is but a dream. The subsequent verses include things like "This is the way we brush our teeth" and "This is the way we put on our clothes," which caused one historian to theorize that the song was about a women's prison at HMP Wakefield. The prison had a mulberry bush in the courtyard, and historian RS Duncan thus suggested that the verses are about the routine the women go through each morning.

News Breaking News! This category is devoted to all of our news articles, with a focus on the biggest breaking stories in the world of show business. We’ve managed to break plenty of viral news stories in the past, from the release of the new Lion King live-action movie to the announcement that Holly Willoughby would be replacing Ant McPartlin on I’m A Celebrity. As well as entertainment news we also feature breaking articles from the most weird and wonderful corners of the internet. If you want to keep up-to-date with fascinating news stories that are slightly off-the-radar, then this is the place to be.

10. My Little Pony

Holy crap! This rhyme is about an old lady who is basically losing her mind because she has so many children. She then feeds them a very minimal meal and beats the poor children before making them go to bed! Sheesh. The current lyrics of this rhyme are pretty innocuous, but the older versions are way less wholesome. Not only do they imply that the singer is trying to sleep with their beloved — already kind of weird for unsuspecting kids to be singing — but it's also clear they are trying to pressure this person into sex. Lines like "You must love me, diddle, diddle/cause I love you," and "I heard one say, diddle, diddle/Since I came hither/That you and I, diddle, diddle/Must lie together" are not great. Not quite as silly and lighthearted as it seems, I guess. “Ladybird Ladybird” Ladybird, ladybird fly away home, Your house is on fire and your children are gone, All except one, And her name is Ann, And she hid under the baking pan. So while the current lyrics are fine, the origins are still highly disturbing. "It's Raining, It's Pouring" It’s raining; it’s pouring. The old man is snoring. He bumped his head on the top of the bed, And couldn’t get up in the morning. Some items, such as personalised or custom-made products, may not be eligible for return unless they are defective or damaged.

The innocent tunes do draw attention away from what's going on in the rhyme; for example the drowned cat in Ding dong bell, or the grisly end of the frog and mouse in A frog he would a-wooing go”, music historian Jeremy Barlow, a specialist in early English popular music, tells me. “Some of the shorter rhymes, particularly those with nonsense or repetitive words, attract small children even without the tunes. They like the sound and rhythm of the words; of course the tune enhances that attraction, so that the words and the tune then become inseparable.” He adds, “The result can be more than the sum of the parts.”Here we go round the mulberry bush, The mulberry bush, The mulberry bush. Here we go round the mulberry bush On a cold and frosty morning. Paul Curtis's 21st century nursery rhymes are traditional English nursery rhymes reworked for a contemporary audience. The collection includes funny nursery rhyme parodies, together with one or two poems that are either quite rude or distinctly dirty, depending upon your sensitivities in such matters. 21st Century Nursery Rhymes # 1 Ladybird, Ladybird is also about 16th Century Catholics in Protestant England and the priests who were burned at the stake for their beliefs. offended. For those who are easily confused, there are online dictionaries galore which will provide suitable (although sometimes self-referential) definitions of cottaging, frottaging, dogging, tea bagging and many more sexual deviancies. More Rude and Dirty Poems