Nursery rhymes, so-called because they were told by wet-nurses to young children who slept in the nurseries of large houses, are little sing-song rhymes that have been passed down over the centuries and which are still told to children today. They’re cheerful, funny little poems and rhymes, designed to delight children and teach them language in a way that they will enjoy and understand. But that’s all. After all…they’re just nonsense-verses…right?

Wrong.

Here are the real stories and origins behind some of the most common nursery rhymes that you and I grew up with in our childhoods.

Jack Be Nimble

Jack be nimble,
Jack be quick!
Jack, jump over the candlestick!

A cute little poem, isn’t it? About someone jumping over a candle. But what does it mean?

This poem dates back to the 1500s. In Tudor-era England (1485-1603), a common superstition held that one’s fortunes could be foretold by jumping over a burning candle. How did this play out in practice? Well, you lit a candle, placed it on the floor and jumped over it.

If the candlle stayed lit, it signalled good fortune and a bright future.

If the candle went out, it signalled bad fortune and dark times ahead.

Sing a Song of Sixpence

Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full of rye!
Four and twenty blackbirds,
Baked in a pie!

When the pie was opened,
The birds began to sing,
O, what a dainty dish,
To set before the king!

This nursery rhyme also dates back to the rule of the Tudors. In Medieval and Early-Modern high society dinners, it was common practice for chefs to create showpieces for the dinnertable. These dishes or centerpieces weren’t designed to be eaten, they were there as a display-piece to show off the chef’s skill.

It was a common trick-dish that chefs used to bake, that appears in this nursery rhyme. A pie-base and walls were baked in an oven. The lid of the pie was baked separately. Live birds (or frogs or mice or any other suitably small animal) were put into the empty pie-crust, and the pastry lid was placed on top. The whole thing was then served at the table.

It wasn’t there to be eaten. It was meant to be a practical joke. The first person to cut the pie open would get the shock of birds (or mice or frogs) jumping out of the pie and flying or running all over the dining-room.

…Pie, anyone?

Lucy Locket

Lucy Locket lost her pocket,
Kitty Fisher found it,
Not a penny was there in it!
Only a ribbon ’round it.

In medieval times, clothes did not come with pockets. If you had anything small that needed to be put away, to keep your hands free, you would put it into a small cloth pouch, purse or ‘pocket’ tied to your belt. If the ribbon or cord holding the pouch to your belt came loose, then you literally..lost a pocket.

This is also the origin of the term ‘cutpurse’ (meaning an early type of pickpocket-criminal), who would quite literally cut the cord of your pocket away from your belt with a knife, and then run off with it!

Pease Pudding

Pease Pudding Hot,
Pease Pudding Cold,
Pease Pudding in the pot,
Nine days old.

Pease Pudding (also called Pease Porridge or Pease Pottage) was a staple-food of the peasantry in medieval times. Made of little more than peas, water and grains, this cheap, filling food made up one of the cornerstones of the medieval peasant diet. In times of famine, food was so hard to come by, that people relied on this simple vegetable stew to sustain them through even the toughest times, eating it…hot…cold…or even rancid stale! Pease pudding remained a popular quick-and-easy meal well into the Victorian era (during which, it was sold by street-vendors as fast-food, along with sheeps’ trotters, baked potatoes and of course…fish and chips!).

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier…

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier,
Sailor, rich man, poor man,
Beggar-man, thief!

Almost everyone knows this rhyme. It goes all the way back to the late 1400s. It appeared in its present form in 1695.

This simple poem, just three lines long, is actually a remnant of a much larger poem, sung by girls in centuries past, in a similar manner to a jump-rope song. The girl would ask such questions as when she would marry, where she would live, what she would wear on her wedding-day, how she would get the dress (indicating financial status) and lastly, what kind of husband she would marry. The poem lists out all the possible occupations that her future husband might have.

Monday’s Child

Monday’s child is fair of face,
Tuesday’s child is full of grace,
Wednesday’s child is full of woe,
Thursday’s child has far to go,
Friday’s child is loving and giving,
Saturday’s child works hard for a living,
But the child who is born on the Sabbath Day,
Is bonnie and blithe and good and gay.

If you ever wondered why Morticia and Gomez Addams’s daughter is named Wednesday Addams…that’s why.

This rhyme, from the 1830s, was supposed to predict a child’s future and temperment, dependent on the day on which he or she was born.

Pat-a-Cake, Pat-a-Cake

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake,
Baker’s Man,
Bake me a cake as fast as you can,
Pat it, and prick it, and mark it with a ‘B’,
And put it in the oven for baby and me!

This rhyme dates to the 1690s. But what’s the whole thing about ‘mark it with a B’ for?

Believe it or not, but people didn’t always do their baking at home.

Before the invention of the first real household stoves (the cast-iron range-cooker in the early 1800s), most people did their cooking on open fires, in pans or pots or cauldrons.

This was fine for things like spit-roasting meat, or cooking things in a pot, like stew…or soup…or 2-minute noodles.

But what if you wanted to bake a cake? Or a pie? It simply couldn’t be done in the comfort of your own home, because  the domestic oven didn’t exist at the time.

So if you did make a pie or a cake, and wanted to bake it, but didn’t have an oven, what did you do?

More often than not, you took it down the street to the village bakery. Here, the local baker would put your pie or cake into his big commercial oven, and bake it for you (for a small consideration, of course).

Because this was a pretty common practice before the widespread use of the first modern range-stoves (which had their own, inbuilt ovens), bakers would mark the tops of their customers’ pies and cakes with their owners initials. This was to prevent mix-ups and confusions when the baked goods were removed from the ovens and laid on tables to cool, before customers came to pick up their finished goods. Hence the line ‘mark it with a ‘B”.

Yankee Doodle

Yankee Doodle,
Went to town,
A-riding on his pony,
Stuck a feather in his cap,
And called it ‘Macaroni’!

This popular song dates from the mid-1700s in the British North-American colonies.

What the hell is ‘Macaroni’?

Well…it’s…pasta.

But in the 1700s, pasta was new. Especially to the English. And English travellers encountering ‘macaroni pasta’ for the first time, found it unique, exciting and oh-so next-big-thing. So it was, that anything new, amazing, and eventually – over-the-top, exaggerated and excessively decorated, came to be known as ‘Macaroni’.

The song was invented by British soldiers living in Colonial America at the time of the French-and-Indian Wars (ca. 1750s). It was designed to poke fun at the fashionable aspirations of the American colonials and how they strived to put on airs and graces, and dress up in the latest European fads and fashions…and failed miserably. Basically, it’s the British teasing the Yanks about how they’re pathetic tryhards at imitating the latest European fashions.

…Looks like nothing much has changed in 250 years.

Anyway. What is ‘Macaroni’?

Macaroni was a crazy European fashion of the mid-1700s. The word was used to describe anything new, flashy, outlandish and ridiculously foppish and exaggerated. The Macaroni fashion and style was closely linked to 18th century foppishness – a fop being someone who paid far too much attention to his appearance…basically metrosexuality before it was cool. It was this exaggerated attention paid to one’s appearance…and the thought that one looked GOOD…that the British poked fun at their colonial counterparts in the song.