Nursery crimes: the horrific tales behind the songs we sing to children

Johnny shall earn but a penny a day,
Because he can’t work any faster.

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A “Daw”, I read, means “a lazy person”, so the rhyme, as best I can understand it, is about two minimum-wage workers who deserve to be poorly paid due to their low productivity.

Who’s writing this stuff? The Business Council of Australia? Gina Rinehart? And why is Nana sharing this right-wing propaganda with her tiny grandson?

Pip’s exhausted by the time we arrive home, so I try to sing him asleep. I reach for a classic: Rock-A-Bye-Baby.

Rock-a-bye-baby, on the tree top,
When the wind blows the cradle will rock.
When the bough breaks the cradle will fall,
And down will come baby, cradle and all.

And so, with this beguiling melody, I invite my grandson to tumble into the land of sleep by imagining himself being lodged high in a tree on a day of forecast high winds. The winds will, at first, merely rock the cradle in which he is ensconced. But as the winds intensify, the branch on which his cradle sits will snap, his cradle will fall, crashing chaotically to the ground, with him inside.

So, Pip, you just relax and go to sleep.

Mind you, not everything I sing for him is filled with a horrific narrative. Along the Road to Gundagai envisages a young traveller who returns to his childhood home, to experience the joy of family and friends. I love the sweetness of the imagery, and sang it regularly to my own children:

“There’s my mother and daddy, a-waiting for me,
And the pals of my childhood, once more I will see.”

I’m guessing there may be a dark back story about why the young person was forced to leave Gundagai, but it’s not disclosed in the song.

Oh, I’ve just looked it up. According to some sources, the song “brings to life the story of the men who went to the Great War, many of them never to return home.” The original lyrics, I find, include this couplet, often omitted:

When I get back there, I’ll be a kid again –
Oh! I’ll never have a thought of grief or pain.

So, Pip, just relax while your grandfather evokes all the horrors of the First World War, one of the most brutal conflicts in humanity’s history, and the shattered men and women who somehow survived.

I’m feeling more irresponsible by the moment. Surely, I can do better.

What about Waltzing Matilda? Oh, that’s right, the suicide of a sheep thief. Or how about Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport? One problem: it’s creator, Rolf Harris. Also, the lyrics, in which a dying stockman instructs his friends on how to deal with his body upon his death: “Tan me hide when I’m dead, Fred”.

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This instruction, by the way, is then carried out by the stockman’s mates. “So we tanned his hide when he died, Clyde, and that’s it hanging on the shed”.

Ah yes, we sure know how to pick popular songs for children.

Or there’s Ring a Ring o’ Rosie, which some (but not all) say is about the Great Plague of London. Or Oranges and Lemons, in which we follow a condemned man on the route to his execution. Or Pop Goes the Weasel, which details a trip to a London pawnbroker due to some mounting financial problems.

“Life”, as Malcolm Fraser observed, “wasn’t meant to be easy”. Yes, sure. But could we hold off breaking the news, perhaps, until they turn 10?

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