Once upon a time...

Once upon a time there was a young person who liked hearing stories and nursery rhymes, jokes, all sorts of verbal things. Often these most attractive phrases and verses were quite puzzling but many would linger and occupy the mind at the oddest of hours.

"Once UPON a time..." ?

No matter which culture you come from, you will all have your favourites. For some of us who have inherited the culture of English, a universal language in our time, we share so many of these oddities in common, but I feel confident to make this simple assertion: every language probably has equivalents but not of identical subject matter.

Oranges and Lemons!

Chalk and Cheese!

Is it possible that these are not found in some sort of equivalent in Arabic, Chinese or Swahili?

Well, probably not "oranges and lemons" in Inuit, but maybe a word game which is not so different in nature?

Let's take Jack! 

Jack is so very English isn't he? He is the subject of many a nursery ryhme:

Jack be nimble,

 Jack be quick, 

Jack jump over the candlestick.

Little Jack Horner sat in a corner 

eating his puddin' and pie, 

He put in his thumb 

and pulled out a plumb 

and said 

"What a good boy am I!"

Then on another occasion Jack teamed up with his sister and they went up a hill to fetch a pail of water.

This expedition proved to be more challenging than the candlestick-jumping incident, or the occasion of pulling a plumb out of his pie, so Jack got his head bandaged in vinegar and brown paper! Not a good look Jack!

Up Jack got

And home did trot,

As fast as he could caper;

Went to bed

To mend his head

With vinegar and brown paper.

This nursery rhyme has a most English connotation, but could there be any equivalent in French, German or Italian?  Let's not take this so far as Aztec, Inuit or Swahili.

Over to the other side, Jill and her little lady friends... "Mary Mary" and "Little Miss Muffet"!

I love these word games:

"Mary Mary quite contrary 

how does your garden grow?

With silver bells and cockleshells, 

and pretty maids all in a row."

Isn't that a stunner. I don't think we'll find that particular word game in Arabic or Russian, but there may well be an equivalent.

As for "Little Miss Muffet who sat on her tuffet, eating her curds and her whey"...

Where did that "tuffet" come from?

Was it a tuffet of grass or shrubery? 

Or is it perhaps an item of clothing which she may have worn or carried with her?

Or might it refer obliquely to her nether body parts?

"A tuffet is a small grassy mound or clump of grass; or alternatively a low seat. The word is now known overwhelmingly from the nursery rhyme "Little Miss Muffet" which was first printed in 1805."

I expected it to be much older.

So much fun! Who needs Spike Milligan, Groucho Marx or Abbott and Costello? 

And who's afraid of Virgina Wolff?

I once introduced a song to a group of kids, not baby goats, whom I took for a music session once a month in a small country school not far from my place. Wonderful 'not baby goats', the entire school population was about 14 primary schoolers, very bright, and they loved the songs I gave them.

How they loved "The Keeper would a-hunting go" with its question and answer style:

Jacky boy!

Master !

Sing you well?

 Very well! 

Hey down 

Ho down 

Derry derry down, oh 

Among the leaves so green-oh!

It's such a playful verbal form for what is really quite a dark little ditty.

And as for "Yellow Submarine", what a winner that was!

Many other songs, such as "The Fox" who ran out on a chilly night risking life and limb to bring home some poultry for his wife and children, which they cut up with a carving knife...

"The fox and his wife, without any strife

Cut up the goose with a carving knife

They never had such a supper in their life

And the little ones chewed on the bones-oh"

And then, there's this song "mi mither tort me":

"The Tale of the Nancy Lee"

Now one day at the  primary school a lovely young chap, Dominic, was somewhat perplexed by certain elements of the Nancy Lee whose captain, "Captain Brown" was determined to go down with his ship while playing his ukulele. 

A couple of months after first hearing the song this seven or eight year old asked,

"Peter, can I ask you a question?"

"Sure Dominic, anything you like!" (Silly me!)

"Well, you know the Captain... he told his wife she would not drown, and then he tied his wife to the anchor as the ship went down!?!?"

Oh boy! Well, as you might say, I asked for it! I could see he had obviously been troubled by the mental state of the good Captain Brown...

"Yes Dominic, well, you know, it's a nonsense song!"

Not a bad response when you find yourself in a spot of bother.

"What's a nonsense song Peter?"

"Well Dominic, it's not meant to make much sense!~"

"Oh~ " 

and fortunately for me, there he let the matter rest. I don't know if my reply was sufficient to settle his quandary or if it let him rest more easily at night... but I do know these songs gave these not-young-goats plenty to think about.

In fact you could say, these songs and nursery rhymes which include so much that doesn't make any sense at all, actually provide a lead to thought and they may actually condition our "thinking". They may be a way of preparing us for a world which is not logical, not reasonable, and not predictable.

What is it we so love in the manner of word games, puzzles, conundrums, aphorisms, knock-knock who's there?  --- the cow jumped over the moon --- and all the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't put Humpty together again?

What would my life have been like if there were no Charlie, no Groucho, and no Abbott and Costello on first base?

And what would it have been like if there was no Harpo who spoke a completely different language: the language of impish japes and scrapes via an india-rubber body which could suddenly become like a rag doll in a crowded ship's cabin, managing to get in the way of everything which was going on.

What would my grasp of language have been if there were no nursery rhymes?

How could I make sense of this world without: 

Sing a song of sixpence,

A pocket full of rye,

Four and twenty blackbirds

Baked in a pie.

When the pie was opened

The birds began to sing—

Wasn't that a dainty dish

To set before the king?

"When the pie was opened, the birds began to sing" ?

 How can you make any sense of that? 

And of course I simply can't leave Edward Lear out of this mix:

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea

   In a beautiful pea-green boat,

They took some honey, and plenty of money,

   Wrapped up in a five-pound note.

The Owl looked up to the stars above,

   And sang to a small guitar,

"O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love,

    What a beautiful Pussy you are, (R)

Pussy said to the Owl, "You elegant fowl!

   How charmingly sweet you sing!

O let us be married! too long we have tarried:

   But what shall we do for a ring?"

They sailed away, for a year and a day,

   To the land where the Bong-Tree grows

And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood

   With a ring at the end of his nose, (R)

"Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling

   Your ring?" Said the Piggy, "I will."

So they took it away, and were married next day

   By the Turkey who lives on the hill.

They dined on mince, and slices of quince,

   Which they ate with a runcible spoon;

And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,

   They danced by the light of the moon, (R)

I've left out the repeats at the end of each stanza and the highlights are to indicate some of my favourite lunacies. These incongruous words and phrases seem to offer sheer delight in words. They are not meant to make sense in any real world. Perhaps they are meant to destroy the nightmare of reality and replace it with a world which doesn't work by the same rules. 

But what would my understanding of this perplexing world be if my dear mother had not introduced me to Captain Brown, whose wife could not swim, and 

"He'd promised his wife she would not drown 

so he tied he to the anchor as the ship went down".

My Mum, Rita, used to sing blissfully all the nonsense songs she had learned and thereby passed them on to me and my siblings. It was Mum who introduced me to that Captain Brown who manfully, to the very end, played his ukulele as his ship went down? So if Dominic ever wants to know where that song came from, he will just have to thank my Mum.

However all these are very much tied to the English language and culture. 

What are their equiivalents in other languages?

I'm really keen to hear from my friends who have been raised in non-Anglo culture:

Darko dear, what are the equivalents in Croatian?

Aleksia, in Greek?

Alexandr, in Ukranian?

Dainis, whose parents who came from Central Europe, but who was raised in Western Sydney ?

and Roland, I'm sure you could give us some mighty fine French equivalents.

Sadly I have no equivalents to offer from my personal experience of Arabic as spoken in Lebanon, nor Swahili, nor Inuit! And I'm not familiar with any of the many languages spoken by the people who inhabited this fine country for 50,000 years before we came along and took it from them, relegating them to a status way below second class citizens. 

Rather than use the phrase "took it from them" I could have used a very direct English verb: "stole". But that word seems so brutual, so I chose a more polite phrase. I hope no-one is offended by my politeness on this occasion.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Okay dear friends, in closing this down I wish to introduce a song which my friend Dainis sent me a few months back:

Text:

 

Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown

And things seem hard or tough

 

And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft

And you feel that you've had quite enough

 

Lyrics:

 

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving

And revolving at 900 miles an hour,

It's orbiting at 19 miles a second so it's reckoned

A sun that is the source of all our power

The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see

Are moving at a million miles a day

In an outer spiral arm at 40.000 miles an hour

Of the galaxy we call the Milky Way

 

Our galaxy itself contains 100 billion stars

It's a 100.000 light years side to side

It bulges in the middle, 16.000 light years thick

But out by us, it's just 3000 light years wide.

We're 30.000 light years from galactic central point

We go round every 200 million years

And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions

In this amazing and expanding universe

 

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding

In all of the directions it can whizz

As fast as it can go the speed of light you know

12 million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is

So remember when you're feeling very small and insecure

How amazingly unlikely is your birth

And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space

Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth

I hope this little post has solved a few problems for some if not all of you!

pt