Nursery Rhymes – Page 3 – Interesting Literature

A Short Analysis of the ‘Hey Diddle Diddle’ Nursery Rhyme

By Dr Oliver Tearle

We tend to associate nonsense verse with those great nineteenth-century practitioners, Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll, forgetting that many of the best nursery rhymes are also classic examples of nonsense literature. ‘Hey Diddle Diddle’, with its bovine athletics and eloping cutlery and crockery, certainly qualifies as nonsense. What does this intriguing nursery rhyme mean, if anything? What are its origins? Iona and Peter Opie, in The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford Dictionary of Nusery Rhymes), call ‘Hey Diddle Diddle’ ‘probably the best-known nonsense verse in the language’, adding, ‘a considerable amount of nonsense has been written about it.’

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.

A Short Analysis of the ‘Hickory Dickory Dock’ Nursery Rhyme

By Dr Oliver Tearle

‘Hickory dickory dock’ is one of the most recognisable nursery rhymes in the English language, but what its original purpose or meaning may have been is less clear. What does ‘Hickory dickory dock’ actually mean? Does it mean anything? First, here’s a reminder of the words:

Hickory, dickory, dock,
The mouse ran up the clock;
The clock struck one,
The mouse ran down,
Hickory, dickory, dock.

It’s worth noting that this version is taken from Iona and Peter Opie’s The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford Dictionary of Nusery Rhymes), but some versions offer a different fourth line, and an alternative rhyme with ‘one’:

A Short Analysis of the ‘London Bridge Is Falling Down’ Nursery Rhyme

By Dr Oliver Tearle

‘London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down’: this line appears towards the end of one of the greatest poems of the twentieth century, T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. Of course, the nursery rhyme or children’s song from which Eliot borrowed this line is much older. But what’s the story behind ‘London Bridge Is Falling Down’? First, here’s a recap of the nursery rhyme itself:

London Bridge is falling down,
Falling down, falling down,
London Bridge is falling down,
My fair Lady.

Build it up with wood and clay,
Wood and clay, wood and clay,
Build it up with wood and clay,
My fair Lady.

Wood and clay will wash away,
Wash away, wash away,
Wood and clay will wash away,
My fair Lady.

A Short Analysis of the ‘Thirty Days Hath September’ Rhyme

By Dr Oliver Tearle

As Groucho Marx once said, ‘My favourite poem is the one that starts “Thirty Days Hath September”, because it actually means something.’ The meaning of ‘Thirty Days Hath September’ is self-evident and straightforward. But what are the origins of this famous rhyme? ‘Thirty Days Hath September’ runs, of course:

Thirty days hath September,
April, June and November;
All the rest have thirty-one,
Excepting February alone.
Which only has but twenty-eight days clear
And twenty-nine in each leap year.

One early reference to ‘Thirty Days Hath September’, from William Harrison in 1577, actually begins, er … ‘Thirty days hath November’:

A Short Analysis of ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’

On a well-known children’s rhyme

We continue our short pieces about star-related poems today, following on from yesterday’s post about Emily Dickinson’s star-poem. ‘Twinkle, twinkle, little star’ is a well-known children’s poem, and yet, like many well-known things, how well do we actually know it? Who wrote it, for instance? And who can recite the second verse of the poem? Is it a poem, or a song? Clearly these matters require a little investigation and analysis to become fully clear. But first, a reminder of ‘Twinkle, twinkle, little star’ – and we mean the full version, not just that famous first verse.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.

When the blazing sun is gone,
When he nothing shines upon,