The Rhymes We Never Questioned

Every Indian parent can hum along to “Jack and Jill” or “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” We learned these nursery rhymes as toddlers, and now we pass them on to our own kids with fond nostalgia. It’s adorable to watch a little one chant “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall…” or “Johnny Johnny, yes Papa.” We smile, clap, and sing along – after all, it’s innocent fun. But have we ever paused in the middle of “London Bridge is falling down” to wonder: What on earth are we singing about?

At first glance, these English nursery rhymes seem like harmless nonsense meant to amuse children. Yet, beneath their sing-song rhythms lie stories of another time and place – some quaint, some unsettling, and many completely unrelated to an Indian child’s world. As parents, our goal isn’t to spoil the fun or banish English rhymes forever. It’s to reflect on what our children are actually saying and why it matters. Nursery rhymes aren’t just catchy tunes; they carry messages and values, planting seeds in young minds. And when those seeds come from a very different culture and history, they might grow into something we never intended.

When Cute Turns Dark: The Hidden Histories

Many classic English rhymes hide surprisingly dark or odd histories. The cheerful words we’ve chanted for generations often originated as commentary on wars, plagues, and social unrest in old England. Seemingly innocent lines can carry the weight of violent events or antiquated ideas:

• “London Bridge is Falling Down” – Children merrily link arms and pretend to be a “falling” bridge. Harmless, right? Yet one popular theory about this rhyme’s origin is chilling: it may reference an old myth of children sacrificed and buried in the bridge’s foundations to keep it standing strong. (Yes, you read that correctly – children in the foundations!) Whether or not that legend is true, the image is grim. For Indian kids singing about London’s bridge, the context is completely lost – they’re reciting words linked to a distant, dark folktale that has nothing to do with their lives.

• “Jack and Jill” – A simple tale of two kids fetching water? Look closer. Jack falls down and “breaks his crown” (a serious head injury), and Jill tumbles after. End of story. We usually chuckle as if it’s a lighthearted mishap. In reality, the rhyme describes a scary accident with no comforting resolution. Some historians even link “Jack and Jill” to historical figures (like a beheaded French king Louis XVI and his queen, or older Norse mythology). But even without those theories, what is a child to make of it? The rhyme takes a painful fall and treats it as casual fun – as if cracking your skull is just part of a day’s play. Kids may giggle, but they also absorb the idea that serious injury is no big deal.

• “Three Blind Mice” – Surely a silly song about mice, right? Except those mice get their tails cut off with a carving knife by a vengeful farmer’s wife. It’s shockingly violent if you think about it: a woman mutilates three blind creatures. Historically, this rhyme is said to reference a British queen executing three men (the “mice” being Protestant loyalists blinded by faith). We don’t tell toddlers that backstory – but still, in playfully singing about maiming animals, we normalize a degree of cruelty. The violence is sugarcoated in bouncy rhymes, so children laugh instead of feel empathy.

• “Ring a Ring o’ Roses” – Kids dance in a circle and gleefully “all fall down.” Many believe this nursery rhyme actually refers to the Great Plague that devastated Europe in the 17th century. “Roses” mimic the red rashes of plague, “posies” are the herbs people carried to ward off illness, and everyone “falling down” signifies death. Imagine: a bleak epidemic where people dropped like flies, now remembered as a sing-along game for preschoolers. Indian children have no reason to learn about the Black Plague through a rhyme, yet we blithely teach them this morbid little song. It turns mass death into a nursery game – a serious event trivialized into “Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.”

• “Humpty Dumpty” – A big egg falls off a wall and shatters irrevocably. All the king’s men “couldn’t put Humpty together again.” Many interpret Humpty as a symbol for something that, once broken, can never be fixed (some say it’s about a broken cannon or even the downfall of a British king). For a child, the rhyme is puzzling at best and bleak at worst – poor Humpty is left in pieces forever, and that’s it. Unlike a comforting bedtime story, this rhyme offers no happy ending or lesson, just a fatalistic splat. It subtly introduces the idea that some calamities are final and beyond help. That’s a heavy concept to slip into an infant’s playlist.

• “Georgie Porgie” – A lesser-known rhyme that nonetheless pops up in old nursery books. Georgie Porgie kisses the girls and makes them cry; when other boys come around, cowardly Georgie runs away. This little verse actually alludes to a real British Duke (George Villiers) famed for scandals in the 1600s. The themes? Unwanted advances, broken hearts, and cowardice. Hardly the stuff of ideal lessons for kids! In an Indian context, do we really want our toddlers reciting a rhyme about a boy who harasses girls and then flees? Likely not – it’s completely out of place and sends a questionable message about bullying and consent (or rather, the lack thereof).

These are just a few examples – and not every English nursery rhyme has a dark secret. (Some are genuinely sweet or just absurd wordplay.) But many popular ones do carry baggage: references to colonial times, class divisions, even torture and prejudice. We often sing them blindly, unaware of the original meaning – but the subtle undertones can still seep into a child’s mind.

Cultural Dissonance in the Nursery

Beyond the overt violence or gloom, there’s another issue: cultural relevance. Most English rhymes came from a European world – kings and queens, black sheep and wool, posies and pies. They reflect British landscapes, seasons, and social norms. Plopped into an Indian setting, they can seem cute but foreign – and sometimes, they clash with the values we’d prefer to teach. Consider these points of dissonance that Indian parents might overlook:

• Alien Themes & Contexts: When children in Mumbai or Bangalore sing about “London Bridge” or a “Duke” or “cockle shells and silver bells” (from “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary”), they’re reciting words with zero connection to their reality. Our kids have likely never seen London Bridge, don’t know what a duke is, and have no context for Bloody Mary or her garden of torture devices (yes, that’s an alleged origin of “Mary, Quite Contrary”). These rhymes are hand-me-downs from British history. By embracing them unquestioned, we end up celebrating British lore and places more than our own. An English child might feel a cultural spark hearing about London’s bridge or old English sheep – but an Indian child is left memorizing random Western trivia with no idea of their own heritage’s rhymes and stories.

• Colonial Hangover: It’s not an accident that English rhymes dominate many Indian schools and nurseries. This is a legacy of colonial education, where British songs replaced or overshadowed local oral traditions. Decades after Independence, we still often assume that learning English rhymes is a mark of being “well-educated.” There’s no harm in learning them per se – except when it’s only them. If our curriculum and parenting completely ignore Indian nursery songs in favor of “Yankee Doodle” and “Jack Be Nimble,” we risk implicitly teaching children that Western culture is superior or more worth knowing. It’s a subtle hierarchy: the unspoken message that English = educational, whereas our vernacular rhymes are less important. This kind of cultural conditioning can chip away at a child’s pride in their own background.

• Problematic Imagery and Biases: Some rhymes seem harmless until you look at them through Indian eyes. Take “Chubby Cheeks, dimple chin” – a popular English ditty where a child’s features are praised: chubby cheeks, rosy lips, “eyes so blue,” “hair so curly,” and “very fair” skin. It ends with “Isn’t she lovely?” Now, imagine the impact of this rhyme in India, a society long struggling with colorism and Eurocentric beauty standards. Many Indian children do not have blue eyes, or curly golden hair, or fair skin – and they shouldn’t have to! By singing this rhyme, we inadvertently idealize one specific look (essentially a white Western ideal) as the definition of a cute child. A little girl with brown skin and black hair might start wondering, “Am I not pretty like the rhyme says?” It plants seeds of self-doubt and reinforces the toxic idea that fair skin or colored eyes are somehow superior. The same goes for phrases like “fair lady” in “London Bridge” or even the word “black” in “Baa Baa Black Sheep.” Children are perceptive; they notice that black sheep is the odd one out giving away its wool, or that a “fair lady” is something to sing about. In a culture where “fair” still too often equals “lovely” in the media, this language matters. We want our kids to grow up confident in their own skin and looks, not chanting rhymes that subtly favor foreign features or suggest darkness is bad.

• Outdated Morals (or Lack Thereof): A lot of English rhymes don’t exactly model behavior we’d encourage. “Johnny Johnny, Yes Papa” literally depicts a child lying to his father’s face about eating sugar, then both laugh it off with a “Ha ha ha!” It’s cute as a game, but think about it – Johnny is sneaking sweets and fibbing; Daddy finds out and… just chuckles? This rhyme normalizes lying and unhealthy eating in a playful way. Indian parents often emphasize honesty and discipline with food, yet we have toddlers repeatedly acting out the role of a mischievous liar with a belly full of sugar. It’s confusing when you consider it! Similarly, “Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater” talks about a man who “put his wife in a pumpkin shell and there he kept her very well.” That’s essentially a reference to locking up one’s wife – a macabre image of domestic violence and control, passed off as a nursery rhyme. We rarely teach that one nowadays (thankfully), but many of us know it from old books. These kinds of rhymes carry values or scenarios that clash with what we’d actually teach a child about right and wrong. Do we want to normalize lying, gluttony, bullying, or violence – even indirectly? Of course not. But by unthinkingly repeating these rhymes, we sometimes do exactly that, at least in a pretend-play fashion that kids may take more seriously than we realize.

In short, there is a cultural and moral disconnect in many imported rhymes. They were created in a different world, to often subtly reinforce that world’s norms (be it British social hierarchy, or an era’s prejudices). When transplanted to India, they can ring hollow or send the wrong signal. Our children deserve rhymes that reflect their own world – the sights, sounds, values, and ethos that they live in and that we as Indian parents hold dear.

Little Ears, Big Impressions

Why fuss about nursery rhymes at all? Some might argue: Kids don’t understand these deep meanings – to them it’s just fun sound! It’s true that a toddler isn’t consciously thinking about the plague while singing “Ring o’ Roses.” However, early childhood is a delicate, formative time. The songs, stories and images a child is exposed to do shape their psyche in subtle ways. Consider how easily kids mimic and internalize patterns. If they repeatedly sing about violence as if it’s amusing, it can numb their natural aversion to harm. If every “hero” or subject in their rhymes is from a foreign land, they might start to view their own culture’s stories as second-class. If they never see themselves – their skin color, their environment, their family structure – reflected in the nursery rhymes and books they consume, it quietly sends the message that their reality is not the “ideal” or is unimportant.

Children have impressionable minds. They notice more than we give them credit for. The boy who constantly hears praise of “fair ladies” and “blue eyes” might develop a preference for those features, thinking that’s what beauty is. The girl who role-plays Queen Mary beheading her ‘contrary’ subjects in a rhyme might not grasp the history, but she’s being introduced to the concept of violent punishment as a game. The class of Indian kindergarteners who ritually sing about British castles, English tea, or Western nursery characters are subtly being distanced from their own heritage. Over time, this can contribute to that oft-discussed identity issue: the Indian child who knows English rhymes and Western fairy tales, but can’t recite a single verse of couplets of Tulasidas, Surdas, Tukaram or Thyagaraja or a regional folk song, and knows nothing of, say, Meera’s bhajans. It’s a small but telling symptom of a larger cultural gap.

No, nursery rhymes alone won’t make or break a child’s character. But they are a part of the cultural diet we feed our young ones. Just as we worry about giving them nutritious food, we might also think about giving them nutritious culture – inputs that make them feel secure, valued, and rooted. The British nursery rhymes we inherited often have empty calories at best (nonsense words and dated references) and toxic seasoning at worst (violence, prejudice, fear). As loving parents, we have to ask: can we do better?

The Bharatiya Alternative: Rhymes with Roots

Imagine an alternative universe of nursery rhymes – one that draws from India’s own rich heritage and gentle wisdom. In fact, we don’t have to imagine it; it’s already woven into our cultural fabric, just waiting to be sung. Before British rhymes took over, Indian mothers and grandmothers lulled children with soft vernacular songs, taught them counting and morals through rhyming couplets, and passed on folklore in sing-song form. These treasures are still here; we just need to bring them back into the spotlight. What might a nursery rhyme rooted in Bharatiya tradition sound like? Here are a few beautiful possibilities that could resonate with our kids:

• Rhymes that Celebrate Nature and Gratitude: Many Indian languages have lullabies about the moon (Chanda Mama) or the morning sun. We can create a simple, joyful rhyme about a child greeting the sunrise: “One, two, the sky so blue; three, four, open the door… seven, eight, sunlight straight…” – a counting rhyme where each number is tied to the child’s morning routine of bowing to Mother Earth, seeing the sun, picking flowers for the home temple. Instead of “Ten little toes all in a row” as a drill, how about “Ten lotus petals for the puja tray”? By incorporating daily Indian rituals (like a small prayer or yoga stretch at dawn) into rhymes, we instill gratitude and discipline gently. A toddler can learn to say “Pranam” to the earth and sun with the same ease they learned to say “hello” in a rhyme. This fosters a connection to nature and spirituality from the get-go – values central to dharmic thought.

• Heroes and Heroines from Indian Epics: Rather than endlessly singing about Little Miss Muffet or Jack Horner (characters with no significance to us), why not sing of Krishna, Rama, Sita, Hanuman, or brave Rani Lakshmibai? We can frame their stories in simple rhymes. Picture a verse: “Rama, Rama, yes, my dear? Did you bring the dawn of cheer? Yes, sir, yes, sir, evil’s no more – Hanuman helped and Lakshman for sure!” – A playful riff that mirrors the rhythm of “Baa Baa Black Sheep” but tells the tale of Lord Rama’s victory over evil with the help of friends. In fact, some creative educators have done exactly this, turning the tune of “Baa Baa Black Sheep” into a victory song of Rama returning to Ayodhya, or the rhythm of “Johnny Johnny” into a morning prayer routine. Children light up when they hear about Hanuman’s leaps or Ganesha’s wisdom in a catchy rhyme – these figures are part of our cultural DNA, and introducing them early builds pride and familiarity.

• Moral Lessons with a Twist: Indian philosophy has gems like “Satyam vada, dharmam chara” (speak truth, follow righteousness) and “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” (the world is one family). These can be woven into lilting verses for kids. Envision a short rhyme called “Speak the Truth”: “Speak the truth, but speak it kind; words like flowers, ease the mind” – a gentle jingle teaching honesty and compassion, drawn from the Vedic ideal that truth should be conveyed with love. Or a rhyme about unity: “The world is a family beneath the sun, no ‘yours’ or ‘mine’, we all live as one.” Such verses carry profound lessons in simple words, planting seeds of inclusivity, kindness, and integrity. They align with what we want our children to learn as they grow: be truthful, be humble (imagine a rhyme about the tree that bows with fruit to teach humility), respect all life (a verse about caring for animals, which echoes the principle of ahimsa). The beauty is that these lessons come packaged in fun rhymes rather than preachy lectures. Kids learn while laughing – the ideal combo.

• Local Languages and Imagery: Let’s not forget the warmth of our mother tongues. A Bengali or Tamil nursery song about a crow, a peacock, or a mischievous monkey would instantly click with a child more than “Old MacDonald” with his farm (far removed from most Indian kids’ reality). For instance, Marathi kids have grown up with “Sang Sang Bholanath”, and Tamil kids with “Dosai Amma Dosai” – playful songs that reference local foods, animals, and names. These carry the cadence and soul of the culture. By bringing such rhymes (old and new) to our living rooms and classrooms, we validate a child’s own surroundings. A Gujarati toddler hearing about a mor (peacock) dancing in the rain in a rhyme, or a Punjabi kid singing about makki di roti and sarson da saag in a fun way, feels a sense of belonging and joy – “this is about my world!” That emotional resonance can be powerful. It tells the child: your culture is worth singing about, not just some far-off land.

  
  

Embracing a New Tune

There is a growing movement among Indian parents and educators to decolonize the nursery rhyme playlist – not by forcefully banning “Mary had a Little Lamb,” but by balancing it with “Mary had a little lamb, and Meera had a little calf” (why not?). The idea is to enrich our children’s early education with content that is global and local, entertaining and ethically nourishing. We want our kids to be confident global citizens who speak excellent English, yes – but with their roots firmly planted in Indian soil. That confidence comes when a child knows who they are and where they come from, even as they learn about the wider world.

To Indian parents reading this, the message is an emotional and urgent one: our children absorb more than just language from nursery rhymes – they absorb values and worldviews. When your little one innocently asks, “Mama, why did Humpty Dumpty never get back up?” or “Why is the lady fair?”, it’s a reminder that these ditties aren’t as trivial as they seem. We have an opportunity to fill their curious minds with stories that uplift rather than confuse, that reflect love rather than fear, that connect to our ethics rather than random events from British history.

Think back to the songs your own grandmother sang to you – perhaps a soothing Hindi lorri about the moon and a cradle, or a folk song in Telugu or Malayalam that always made you feel safe. Those memories are precious. By reviving and reinventing our indigenous rhymes, we pass on that sense of cultural security and warmth to our kids. It’s a gift of identity and pride wrapped in melody. We can still enjoy English rhymes (some are truly delightful and universal), but we don’t have to accept every rhyme uncritically, nor let them monopolize our children’s imagination.

In practical terms, this could mean actively teaching your child a new Hindi or regional rhyme for every English one they learn, or substituting a disturbing rhyme with a nicer alternative. If a preschool lesson covers “Three Blind Mice,” you might later introduce a fun story-song about clever crows or playful elephants as a counterbalance. If the school play is doing “Old King Cole,” perhaps at home you talk about King Akbar and Birbal’s witty tales in a rhythmic way. Many parents are even composing their own little songs to impart family values – you don’t have to be an expert, just sincere and creative. And with initiatives out there (like Rhymes of Bharat and others) creating collections of India-centric nursery rhymes, resources are growing.

A Cultural Lullaby for the Future

Ultimately, this is about harmonizing our children’s early education with our cultural conscience. Nursery rhymes matter because they are often a child’s first introduction to imaginative language and stories. Those first introductions should spark wonder – but need not carry the baggage of a colonial past or alien values. We have the means to craft a childhood for our kids that is both joyful and grounded in who we are.

Picture an Indian bedtime in the near future: a father hums a familiar tune, but the words are about baby Krishna stealing butter, or about the stars over the Himalayas, or a simple Sanskrit shloka rendered in a lullaby. The child falls asleep hearing that the world is one family, that honesty is good, that they are loved and protected by the lore of their land. Compare that to a child drifting off to “Rock-a-bye baby, on the treetop, when the wind blows the cradle will rock; when the bough breaks, the cradle will fall, and down will come baby, cradle and all.” – a pretty tune, but describing a baby plummeting to the ground! Which imagery would we rather plant in that little dreamer’s mind? The answer is clear.

By unpacking the hidden messages of English nursery rhymes, we don’t seek to demonize them, but to open our eyes as parents. When we see clearly, we can choose wisely. Let’s take the best of the old rhymes (the genuine fun and language play) and infuse them with the heart of Bharatiya culture. Let’s sing of our festivals of light, our rains and mango seasons, our peacocks and wise old grandparents, our values of truth and empathy. Let’s ensure that when our children sing, the songs make them feel proud, safe, and connected to their roots.

Nursery rhymes do matter. They can be a lovely bonding experience and a learning tool – or a careless inheritance we never scrutinized. It’s time to reinvent the rhyme. By doing so, we give our little ones not just rhythm and words, but a sense of self. In each clap and each verse, they’ll carry forward the legacy of a culture that is vibrant, ethical, and their very own. And that is music to any parent’s ears.