By Liz Gordon-Hancock
Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man. Bake me a cake as fast as you can...
Humpty dumpty sat on a wall; Humpty dumpty had a great fall...
I'm reading these Mother Goose rhymes to my two-year-old, as part of his bed-time stories.
Have you ever stopped to think about these nursery rhymes and what these stories or words mean?
So many of these rhymes just don't make sense: Hey diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle. The cow jumped over the what?
Others are a little sinister, like the one about Peter, the pumpkin eater, and whatever he did with his wife.
Then there's Goosey, goosey gander - this one is less familiar so I'll write it out fully:
Goosey, goosey gander, whither shall I wander?
Upstairs and downstairs, and in my lady's chamber.
There I met an old man, who would not say his prayers.
I took him by the left leg, and threw him down the stairs.
I tend to skip this one when I'm reading nursery rhymes to my two-year-old. It's a little ominous to me.
Here's another one: the song and rhyme "Rock a-bye baby" - I instinctively start singing this song to my son whenever I'm cradling him in my arms. The moment embodies a mother's love and care, but the actual words of the song could be considered a bit sinister.
Think about it: "Rock a-bye baby, on the treetops. When the wind blows, the cradle will rock." Why is the baby's bed hanging in a tree, for the wind to blow? Why do I sing lovingly to my child about a cradle hanging in the tree tops, being rocked by the wind, and then falling "cradle and all" out of the tree?
If I actually followed through with the song's lyrics and hung my baby's bed out in a tree, social services would come take my child away!
So why do I lovingly sing to my son about negligence? And why do I read silly, nonsensical nursery rhymes to my child?
Well, why do we buy Elmer's glue as part of our school supplies? Because we used Elmer's glue when we were little, so we automatically buy it for our kids.
I was read these rhymes as a child, so I'm reading them to my child.
As I read nursery rhymes, night after night, I'm recreating a piece of my own childhood. And that realization leads me to another: my parents were read these nursery rhymes when they were little, and probably their parents before them. These nursery rhymes have been read by parents to their children for hundreds of years.
Not only am I recreating a piece of my own childhood, but I'm part of a wider tradition, stretching back into history.
And frankly I could say these rhymes in my sleep, since I've been reading them for so long. “Jack and Jill went up the hill...” We know them so well, these rhymes feel like old, slightly out-dated, friends.
But there's more to it than just the nightly ritual and familiarity. I could argue that there are moral lessons for our children to learn, through these bite-sized stories (take the kittens losing their mittens, for example). Or how the fate of Humpty Dumpty teaches children that some things just can’t be mended or undone.
But I believe the most important aspect of nursery rhymes is the time spent together. For our children, it's just as much (if not more) about the physical contact of snuggling together to read a book, and the sound of our voices as we read aloud.
It's less about what we read, and more about how we're reading it. A parent's voice is soothing to their child, even if you're saying " Old Mother Goose, when she wanted to wander, would ride through the air on a very fine gander."
And so the tradition continues. Someday, my children will be settling down to read “One, two, buckle my shoe...”
About the columnist
Liz Gordon-Hancock, daughter of Bob and Deb Beer, graduated from Bluffton High School in 2000. She attended Ohio Northern University, and received her bachelor's in English Literature in 2004. She is a member of County Line Church of the Brethren.
As part of her studies, she spent her junior year in Wales, United Kingdom, at the University of Wales, Lampeter, where she met her future husband, Robert Gordon-Hancock.
After graduation, she married and moved to London, England. She could hear Big Ben chime the top of the hour from their studio apartment. She commuted on a red, double-decker bus, crossing the River Thames, every weekday for work.
But London was not ideal for raising children, so the Gordon-Hancocks bought a house in Witham, Essex, where they had two children (under free, national healthcare).
After 10 years in the UK, the Gordon-Hancocks moved back to Bluffton to raise their kids in small-town America. They now have three children, Alenah (age 8), Isla (age 6) and Elliot (age 2).
