The origins of many popular nursery rhymes are mired in dark events which give the songs a hidden meaning which gets lost over the years.
Take Humpty Dumpty for example, most people probably reckon the song is about a giant egg-man thing which falls down but it's either about Richard III falling off his horse and getting hacked to death, or a cannon being blasted off the walls of Colchester in a siege during the English Civil War.
Either way it's a pretty violent origin for a song most kids learn when they're very young.
Advert
Then there's 'Incy Wincy Spider', or 'Itsy Bitsy Spider' if you're across the pond in America, which you'd think is about a spider climbing up a drainpipe before getting washed back down by rain and having another go at climbing later on.
Like many nursery rhymes it's a catchy tune with seemingly pretty harmless lyrics, but the real meaning behind the song is pretty dark.
Just to refresh you all on the lyrics, "Incy Wincy Spider climbed up the water spout, down came the rain, and washed the spider out.
"Out came the sun, and dried up all the rain, and Incy Wincy Spider went up the spout again."
Advert
However, the song is actually just an arachnid-friendly rehash of an American tune about poor people getting drunk and hopping onto trains, which could easily kill them.
The song 'Incy Wincy Spider' is based on is called 'Tipsy Dipsy Hobo', and they're sung with the same rhythm.
It goes: "The Tipsy Dipsy Hobo drinks from the lager spout, here comes the train it knocks the hobo out.
"Out comes a man to pick up all the brains, but a Tipsy Dipsy Hobo drinks from the spout again."
The song has its roots in the time after the American Civil War where trains were becoming popular and poor people tried to jump onto them while moving as a way of getting around, usually while drunk.
Advert
So, rather than being a song about a determined little spider clambering up the drainpipe and undeterred by being washed away time and time again, it's a tune about the toll alcoholism takes on the poorest in society.
See, it's all about someone getting drunk, making a horrible error of judgement that gets you killed in a gruesome fashion and then the whole cycle repeats again as another person falls victim to the demon drink.
Spare a thought for the 'man to pick up all the brains' left over by the drunk's collision with the train.
Luckily the intended audience for the nursery rhyme are unlikely to grasp the hidden meaning behind the song or the dark origins which spawned it, so you can probably keep singing this one without fear of traumatising the little ones.
Topics: Weird
Joe Harker