Nursery Rhymes of Horror
When referring to the best horror authors of all time, many will think of Stephen King, Mary Shelly or Edgar Allen Poe. But what is more terror-evoking than a writer or poet who is categorized as a horror author, is one that is actually an iconic nursery rhyme poet with a target audience of babies and small children. Such a poet would be thought to write tales of kittens or rainbows rather than political taxation, overturned societies, the painful deaths of bubonic plague, or the murderous path of Bloody Mary. Mother Goose nursery rhymes such as "Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary," "Humpty Dumpty," "Ring Around a Rosy" and "Baa, Baa Black Sheep" are inappropriate for children and expose young minds to the horrors of the world that should not yet be their concern.
The image of Mother Goose is a sweet-looking old woman who tells tails of wonderment. But, is this who Mother Goose really is? Many believe, …show more content…
It seems as though the author, whomever he or she may be, tried to mask political satires and hide them behind less obvious ideas and figures, such as Humpty Dumpty being an egg rather than a cannon. This is the author's way of escaping accusations of treason or blasphemy (Flinner). While the author was trying to keep his or her name out of trouble, probably did not care that these poems would also be heard by children. During the time period when Mother Goose wrote the poems, sometime around the Seventeenth and Eighteenth century, children did not have much of a childhood and often transitioned into adulthood earlier than they do in our day and age (Flinner). Mother Goose poems were not aimed at children when written, but the poems may have been suitable for the children of that time because they were much more mature and grew up faster than the children of modern