Tag: nursery rhyme

There’s Something About Mary

Now that I have young granddaughters, the songs and nursery rhymes of my own toddling days bubble up from the long forgotten frontiers of my brain. Humpty Dumpty is together again and back up on his wall. The sky is unstable if Chicken Little is to be believed. And the debate rages anew whether “pease porridge” is hot or cold (even if it is forever nine days old).  The list goes on and on but none of these tiny tales holds a candle to the one bizarre question asked of Mary. So let’s ask her again, shall we?

I wouldn’t have remembered Mary were it not for the daily online puzzles of the New York Times. Two weeks ago they devoted an entire word search to the sentences of this odd nursery rhyme.  Which got me to thinking, just who was Mary, why was she “contrary” (other than a convenient rhyme), and what the heck was going on in her garden?

As the saying goes, be careful what you wish for.  As Google goes, be careful what you search for.  Jack and Jill really did go up a hill.  Old MacDonald had a farm.  There’s at least one itsy bitsy spider on the water spout.  But Mary and her garden?  She doesn’t belong anywhere near your grandchildren.

The first interpretation of “Mary, Mary” I came across was completely sanitized from the original.  It claims Mary is the Mary (as in, Jesus’ mother).  Mary’s garden is the growing Catholic church.  Silver bells are the same jinglers used in the church service to recognize miracles with “a joyful noise”.  Cockle shells refer to faithful pilgrims, as in the badges worn by those completing the Way of St. James.  And pretty maids are nuns, lined up for a life of devotion.

Badge of devotion

If we stopped right there, Mary would be heartily embraced by the rest of the kid-friendly characters in my granddaughters’ nursery rhymes.  But more likely we’re singing about “Mary I”, Queen of England in the 1500’s.  This Mary was no saint.  In her brief five-year reign she cleansed her country of heretics… by burning hundreds of them at the stake.  “Bloody Mary” – her apt nickname – somehow became a drink at the bar (which I will never order) and the subject of a child’s nursery rhyme.

Not-so-nice Mary

Mary I was at odds with her father King Henry VIII’s agenda; hence she was “quite contrary”.  Okay that’s fine, but I wish the rhyme stopped right there.  Her garden was likely a reference to a graveyard.  The silver bells and cockle shells describe torture devices of the time (and I won’t be using a Google search to learn more about those).  The maids were innocent women lined up for execution.

This is the stuff of nursery rhymes?  I’m trying to picture little girls back then, sitting around in a circle and coming up with short songs from what they see right in front of them.  Like Rosie and her ring, if some interpretations are to be believed.   As for Ms. Contrary, I think I’ll go with a garden similar to the one shown here.  But since the origins of her rhyme continue to be debated, I’m steering my granddaughters clear of her.  Instead, we’ll sing about the other Mary, the one with the little lamb.

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Fuzzies and Buzzies

My granddaughter, almost six months now, adores her soft-stuffed black-and-yellow bumblebee.  Her little buzzy has a Velcro loop to attach to the car seat or stroller. In her first months, she fixated on Mr. Bee like a best friend.  Today she takes an interest in other things, but I told her mother to set the bee aside as a future keepsake.  Doesn’t everybody wish they still had their first stuffed animal?  Well, I sure do, and mine was more fuzzy than buzzy.

“Baa-a-a-a!”

Nope, not a bear.  Not a dog, not a cat, a fox or a tiger.  My one-and-only stuffed animal was a lamb.  An off-white fuzz-filled plush-soft domesticated farm critter, about 12″ head to hooves.  I named him “Lambie”.  We were inseparable for years.

I’m not here to revisit childhood memories (though it’s remarkable how a cherished wooly companion comes back to mind).  Instead, I want to give sheep their due.  I think sheep are one of the world’s most overlooked animals.  At the farm, everyone pretty much skips the bleating balls of fluff in favor of the more interesting horses, cows, and pigs.  At the zoo it’s the lions, tigers, and bears instead.  And I get it.  Timid, fuzzy herbivores just don’t inspire awe.  So how about instead, we take a look at what you don’t know about sheep:

“Hey! I like ewe!”
  • They have rectangular pupils.  I’ve always thought it was cool how horses can see to the left and right without moving their heads.  Sheep have it even better; a full 270 degrees of vision, meaning the only thing they can’t see is what’s directly behind them.
  • They’re more intelligent than you think.  Sheep can retain the details of fifty faces – human or otherwise – and recall them two years later (no idea how we know this).  They can also be led through a maze and then solve it on their own the second time around, probably because…
  • They have an excellent sense of smell, thanks to scent glands in front of their eyes and in their hooves.  Sheep can leave their scent behind as a sort of trail of bread crumbs while on the move.
  •  They self-medicate.  I’m not pulling the wool over your eyes here.  Sheep can identify plants and other substances having no nutritional value but with healing properties.  They also pass this information on to their offspring.

Now let’s change the channel to what you already know about sheep.  They are followers in every sense of the word (hence the label for like-minded humans).  They are timid, easily led, and never without their flocks.  Just watch this speedy video to see how our fuzzy friends stick together.

Sheep have little ability to defend themselves (how would they when they’re essentially balls of fluff on sticks?)  As a result, they’re in constant fear of their predators. In fact, sheep are so much “flight” versus “fight”, they sometimes die of self-inflicted panic attacks.

Care about them or not, sheep find their way into the narrative.  If not a lamb for a stuffed animal, you learned nursery rhymes like “Baa Baa Black Sheep” (have you any wool?), “Mary Had a Little Lamb”, and “Little Bo Peep” (has lost her sheep).  Maybe you’ve counted sheep (jumping over fences) while trying to fall asleep.  Or listened to Bach’s “Sheep May Safely Graze” while trying to relax.  Dodge’s best-selling truck is the “Ram” and  Los Angeles’s NFL team is the “Rams”.  Most noteworthy, in 1996 an ewe named “Dolly” became the first mammal of any kind cloned from a single cell.  Do sheep matter?  You bet your shears they do.

So if you’re sheepish I say, “Be proud to be so!”  If you’re something of a black sheep I say, “Consider yourself ‘outstanding'”!  And if you’re like me, a dyed-in-the-wool fan of fluff balls on sticks, choose fuzzies over buzzies every time.

Some content sourced from the BCSPCA article, “10 fun facts about sheep”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.