RAISE your hand if you were once obsessed with nursery rhymes. Jack Spratt who ate no fat, the poor helpless three blind mice, the cow who jumped over the moon, the four and 20 blackbirds that got baked in a pie, and the knave of hearts who stole those delicious looking tarts were all very real to me. I remember staring at images of them in various printed editions, pondering endlessly over the verses, and listening over and over again to my two audio cassettes of nursery rhymes sung by nameless people who I am sure my suffering parents had come to loathe.

Where did the dish and the spoon go when they ran away? How was a cat able to get into the palace to see the Queen? What did Jack Horner’s plum pie taste like? Wasn’t anyone going to help that poor old woman who had many children and lived in a shoe? What sort of garden grew silver bells and cockle shells all in rows? Are hot cross buns really hot and with a cross on them? And how did that Humpty Dumpty climb onto a wall in the first place?

Katherine Govier’s Half For You and Half For Me is a loving tribute to her mother Doris who introduced her to the world of nursery rhymes. Doris would read aloud to her rapt audience from a very well-used copy of The Jessie Willcox Smith Mother Goose that was given to her by her own parents when she was little. In her well-organised and creatively laid out book, Govier takes readers back to the world of Mother Goose filled with well-loved characters and unforgettable verses. The reading pleasure is enhanced by the colour illustrations created by Sarah Clement whose depictions of London Bridge falling down and the spider that traumatised Little Miss Muffet are particularly compelling.

Some surprising facts and several snippets of history are learned as Govier reveals the stories behind each nursery rhyme. For it turns out that the intended audience of the earliest nursery rhymes were in fact not those who lived in the nursery. “They were not for children. They were for adults, repeated by the irreverent and mostly powerless population to mark events, satirise the powerful or pass judgment. Quite often they can be read as code.” Interpreted as songs of agitation or chants of the repressed masses, the verses assume a whole other intriguing dimension.

Little Jack Horner

Sat in a corner

Eating a Christmas pie

He put in his thumb

And pulled out a plum

And said, “What a good boy am I!”

Jack Horner apparently served as steward to the Abbot of Glastonbury during the reign of Henry VIII. When Henry decided to disband the monasteries, Jack was sent to the king with a pie containing the deeds to 12 manors. On the way there Jack seems to have “stuck in his thumb” and “pulled out the plum” deed to the Manor of Mells because soon after a man named Thomas Horner moved into the said manor. Horners who live there today claim that there was no ancestor named Jack, but according to Govier the acquiring of the property “seems a bit fishy” and perhaps “originated the practice of having a finger in every pie.”

Mary, Mary, quite contrary

How does your garden grow?

With silver bells, and cockle shells

And pretty maids all in a row.

This popular rhyme appears to taunt Mary, Queen of Scots, and her husband Lord Darnley who was rumoured to be a cuckold. The alternate theory is that the Mary referred to here is Bloody Mary, the eldest daughter of Henry VIII who was determined to re-establish Roman Catholicism in England. The “garden” signifies her barren womb while the “cockle shells and silver bells” allude to the instruments of torture that were used to persecute Protestants during her five-year reign.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

All the King’s horses and all the King’s men

Could not put Humpty together again.

Although Humpty is usually depicted as a giant egg dressed up in men’s clothes, according to Govier, Humpty was probably not a person at all but a large Royalist cannon that was set upon a town wall during the English Civil War. In the summer of 1648 a Royalist army under attack from a Parliamentary force sought protection inside the walls of Colchester. The townspeople were unsympathetic to the Royalist cause to begin with and became hostile when the soldiers requisitioned all their provisions. After suffering 11 weeks of starvation they celebrated when the soldiers were forced to surrender. The moral of Humpty Dumpty’s story, Govier deduces, is that “Might does not always prevail. Something delicate maybe broken that no power can patch up.”

But not all nursery rhymes were political in nature. Mary of the little lamb fame, for instance, was indeed a Mary Sawyer who had a pet lamb which she took to school one day in the town of Sterling, Massachusetts. Govier says that the famous verses were written by a visiting student minister and over time a statue of the lamb was erected in the town’s centre. The duo was immortalised in 1877 by Thomas Edison who made the nursery rhyme the first one to be recorded on his phonograph.

A popular theory about the origin of a famous playground game is cleared up here. It turns out that “Ring around a rosie / A pocket full of posies” has no relation to the Great Plague of London as many assume. Nor is “Hush-a! Husha-a! / We all fall down!” a reference to its 100,000 victims falling dead. The last major epidemic of the bubonic plague, Govier explains, occurred in England in the 17th century while the nursery rhyme did not appear until the late 19th century. So any link between the two is pure invention.

Many other well-known and lesser-known rhymes are included in this volume. The author admits that her selection is influenced by her family’s English, Irish, French and American roots and does not encompass the many cultures alive in Canada today. She also wonders about the wealth of nursery rhymes that were enjoyed by those who grew up with two languages.

My mind immediately turned to the counting game “Dhobi Aya,” the endearing silliness of “Dus Patay Toray” and the poor little “Machi ka Bacha” who suffers a terrible fate. In “Akkar Bakkar Bumbay Bo” how did asi and nawway become puray sau? That simply doesn’t add up. And was the piling up of closed fists to the accompaniment of “Aam Walay Aam Do” just a game my mother made up for my siblings and I, or do others remember it too?

Half For You and Half For Me reminds us that in this age of hand-held devices where children have become glued to all things electronic, there is a great wealth of nursery rhymes waiting to be rediscovered and enjoyed by both children and adults.

Half For You and Half For Me: Best-Loved Nursery Rhymes and the Stories Behind Them

(POETRY)

By Katherine Govier

Illustrated by Sarah Clement

Whitecap Books, Toronto

ISBN 1770502122

173pp