Petty thief, Petty thief.
Turn around.

Petty thief, Petty thief.
Hit the ground.

Petty thief, Petty thief.
Hands on your head.

Bang, bang, bang!
And now you're dead!

-- Traditional 21st Century Nursery Rhyme

So I was thinking the other day about nursery rhmes, and how they were most often made to shield children from the harsh realities of life. "Mary, Mary, quite contrary", for example is a happy little tale about some lady by the name of Mary who had a nice garden full of pretty flowers... Oh, and the severed heads of maids that had displeased her somehow.

"Ring around the rosy" was about the Black plague. Pure and simple, that's all it was. These often over-looked last lines of good old nursery rhymes often hold quite a grissly tale of woe, dispair, and more often than not, alot of death. These have been passed on for generations, and sung to children everywhere, whilst most parents don't even think about what they're saying, or the implications of what is being said.

I grew up for years believing that 'pretty maids' were some type of flower. I didn't know then that it actually refered to dead people. It was such a whimsical nonsense piece of chatter. A less-than-important verse of rhyme. Sure, looking back on it now, i can say that those particular rhymes always made me feel a little uneasy, like there was a story there which I just didn't get. Why the hell do we care about what garden this most contrary of Marys has? Why would we all fall down? What is going on here?