Babies falling from trees? Heads being chopped off in central London? Animals being cooked alive? You wouldn’t expect that that’s what we sing our children before they fall asleep. For as long as we’ve known nursery rhymes have been a part of our life. Dating back to the 14th century many of the songs we sing to our children or siblings come from stories with deeper meaning from that time period and beyond.

But how exactly is each rhyme so dark? To pursue further into the meaning of the rhymes is to dive into a world not of sweet princesses and cute animals but of messy politics, religious violence, sex, illness, murder, spies, traitors and the supernatural. The nursery rhymes explained in this article are only some of the many nursery rhymes that are more than what they seem.

Baa Baa Black Sheep was used to describe the medieval wool tax which was created in the 13th century by King Edward I. The wool tax ensured that the cost of a stack of wool was distributed evenly between the king, the church, and the farmer. Thus, explaining the meaning of the original version explaining, “nothing was therefore left for the little shepherd boy who lives down the lane.” Black sheep were also seen as bad luck to those who had them. Their attraction to fleeces, and wool that could not be dyed, made it less attractive to farmers.

Ring around the Rosie is of the 1665 Great Plague in London. The oh so sweet nursery rhymes describes the deaths of the bubonic plague in which it killed 15% of the population of Britain. The “rosie” was one of the symptoms the victim would get in which their skin became rashy. “Atish-oo Atish-oo we all fall down” refers to the huge number of lives lost. The roses and pocketful of posies masked the smell of rotting flesh of the lives lost to the plague.

Mary, Mary Quite Contrary was of Bloody Mary. The nickname Bloody Mary was given to Queen Mary, daughter of King Henry VIII, for torture and murders of Protestants. According to a BBC news article “her ‘garden’ here is an allusion to the graveyards which were filling with Protestant martyrs. The ‘silver bells’ were thumbscrews; while ‘cockleshells’ are believed to be instruments of torture which were attached to male genitals.”

It may seem dumbfounding to discover the meanings of some of these rhymes and even bizarre to present them to children specifically. But probably at this moment mother and fathers are mindlessly singing their children these rhymes. The catchy tunes and easy to follow lyrics make it easy to glaze over the true meaning to many people of the world. However, it is time to understand the true meanings and even potentially change them for the betterment of our sanity and the ears of our future generations.