The origins of some nursery rhymes are obvious. “Old McDonald had a Farm” was more than likely penned by an author familiar with someone named McDonald who really did have a farm with cows, pigs, ducks, and other animals that regularly emitted sounds generally associated with their respective genera and species.
“Little Miss Muffet” is in all likelihood a slightly embellished account of a young lass’s being frightened off a hassock-like piece of furniture by an overly friendly arachnid attempting to take a seat next to her.
The roots of “Jack and Jill” are equally plain. Two youngsters were periodically sent up an incline to fetch a bucket of H2O, perhaps because it was upstream from where cows belonging to an 18th-century Old McDonald periodically relieved themselves. But since water generally runs downhill the footing was likely treacherous, so unsurprisingly Jack concussed himself en route home and Jill took a tumble as well.
Not every such ditty is so easily explained, though. “Baa Baa Black Sheep,” for example, demands willing suspension of disbelief, since talking rams and ewes were no more common when the poem was published three centuries ago than they are today. And while society’s norms have changed significantly since Little Jack Horner’s time, it’s hard to believe sticking one’s thumb in the family’s Christmas pie and subsequently pulling out a plum would have been acceptable, let alone motivation to give the perpetrator the audacity to cry out, “What a good boy am I!” upon the completion of his selfish and unsanitary act. Also, does anyone really believe an English single mother of multiple kids would be forced to take up residence in discarded footwear? It’s hard to imagine that happening even in 1794, when “There was an Old Woman who lived in a Shoe,” was first published and the loathsome George III was on the throne.
Thanks to an incident at a family outing a couple of weekends ago I believe I’ve discovered the source of another familiar childhood jingle that previously seemed nonsensical.
A group of us were playing Wiffle Ball that day until someone lofted a high foul ball that lodged itself 20-25 feet above our heads in the branches of an un-climbable pine tree that was far too large to shake. Certain family members urged us to give up the ball for lost, but a hastily arranged four-person ad hoc committee consisting of my brother-in-law, my son, my nephew and I decided to recover the trapped spheroid by hurling larger Wiffle Balls at it and knocking it free.
Before long there were two Wiffle Balls in plain sight but tantalizingly out of reach. That prompted a trip to the garage to fetch a rag ball, a baseball-sized stuffed orb which packs a far greater wallop than its plastic brethren. Firing it skyward brought back one ball down, but left the other (and the rag ball) stuck fast. Our next designated missile was a blue Frisbee, which ended up trading places with the rag ball. A subsequent projectile, a Nerf football, quickly joined the Wiffle Ball and the Frisbee as prisoners of the tree’s insatiable branches.
A well-placed white Frisbee dislodged the blue Frisbee and the second Wiffle Ball, but got itself stuck while doing so. Throwing plastic bats didn’t work out, either; the yellow one got detained in the branches after liberating the other objects, and an errant toss of the black one left it stuck in a larger tree five feet higher than where everything else had gotten lodged.
A skillfully thrown plastic football emblazoned with a New York Giants logo brought down the yellow bat, but shortly thereafter two footballs, two Wiffle balls, and the black bat were all suspended above us. However, thanks to creativity, dogged determination, and stubborn refusal to admit defeat, we finally freed all four balls, leaving only the black bat above us. We then unleashed a nearly-fully-inflated volleyball which, after getting stuck (and subsequently knocked loose by the Giants football) a couple of times finally rescued the dangling last bat, leaving the trees totally free of debris and our sore-armed quartet jubilantly victorious over an army of inanimate objects. And all it cost us was 45 minutes and respect of those who witnessed it.
To review: We sent the volleyball to get the Giants football, which was hurled to get the bats, which were thrown to get the Nerf football, which was dispatched to free the Frisbees, which were flung to get the rag ball, which was tossed to get the Wiffle Ball.
So now we know what inspired the author of “There was an old lady who swallowed a fly.”
But, seriously: Can anyone explain what real-life incident prompted “Humpty Dumpty?”
— Andy Young is a teacher at a York County High School. He recently regained full use of his right arm, two weekends after firing the standoff-ending volleyball that brought down the elusive black plastic Wiffle Ball bat.
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