Nursery Rhymes - The Sequel - Suzette Richards's Blog

Humpty Dumpty, by Suzette Richards – image generated 4/4/2024

Recent children's poetry has been confined to the medium of picture books and, as a result, aimed at younger children as the audience. However, a number of children literature contain puns or homophones often only intelligible to the adult reader.

Have you ever wondered ‘What next?’, or ‘What if?’ when you have read a nursery rhyme—they often end abruptly. For example: There are different interpretations of Humpty Dumpty (a cannon or an egg).

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.

Humpty Dumpty is often portrayed as an egg with human characteristics (an example of anthropomorphism); first described as such by Lewis Carroll in his book ‘Through the Looking-Glass’ (1871). It is in fact a riddle and war historians reckon that the answer is ‘a cannon’. Humpty Dumpty was popularised in the United States on Broadway by actor George L. Fox in the pantomime musical ‘Humpty Dumpty’. The show ran from 1868 to 1869.

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Hey diddle diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon,
The little dog laughed to see such sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.

This rhyme is thought to date from the sixteenth century when a reference to it was made in a play by Thomas Preston. Its meaning is unclear but has been suggested to refer to

a. The Israelites flight from Egypt

b. Various constellations

c. Catherine of Aragon

d. Catherine the Great

e. A complaint against Catholic priests

f. It has no meaning at all and is a nonsense rhyme

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Why does the lamb love Mary so? Mary so, Mary so?

Why does the lamb love Mary so? The eager children smiled.

Mary loves the lamb, you know. Lamb, you know, lamb, you know.

Mary loves the lamb, you know. The teacher’s happy smile.

Sarah began teaching young boys and girls in a small school not far from her home (in Newport, New Hampshire). It was at this small school that the incident involving 'Mary's Lamb' is reputed to have taken place. Sarah was surprised one morning to see one of her students, a girl named Mary, enter the classroom followed by her pet lamb. The visitor was far too distracting to be permitted to remain in the building and so Sarah turned him out. The lamb stayed nearby till school was dismissed and then ran up to Mary looking for attention and protection. The other youngsters wanted to know why the lamb loved Mary so much and their teacher explained it was because Mary loved her pet. Then Sarah used the incident to get a moral across to the class (see the above original poem).

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WEEKEND CHALLENGE: I hope this blog has inspired you to look with fresh eyes at nursery rhymes and maybe even write a sequel to one of your favourite ones. You may post the title of your poem here under comments. Unfortunately we can’t post the actual link to our poems under the comments.

MY POEM (adult content): Humpty Dumpty - The Sequel (poetrysoup.com)

Happy quills!

Suzette