“The Truth About Mother Goose”

Most nursery rhymes don’t actually have much in the way of deeper meanings. There are a few, and it’s true that in most cases it takes so long for them to be written down that they might actually be hiding something, but there’s no evidence that they do. My personal favourite comes when the same rhyme is claimed to hold mutually contradictory meanings, such as that a song is simultaneously intended to hide Catholic teachings from Protestants and Protestant teachings from Catholics—when the teachings in question are in fact common to both faiths, the two not being quite so different as certain Catholics and Protestants would have you believe.

In this short, three jesters (the Page Cavanaugh Trio) sing to ask about the truth behind assorted Mother Goose rhymes. A narrator (John Dehner) tells the “true story” behind three different nursery rhymes. “Little Jack Horner” is the story of John Horner, the steward of “a city official” in the time of Henry VIII, who stole the deed to a valuable estate intended for the king. “Mary Mary Quite Contrary” is the tale of Mary Queen of Scots. “London Bridge Is Falling Down” is, obviously, the story of the eventual demise of Old London Bridge.

Are these stories true? No, not particularly. Actually, I know for a fact that even if it’s why the rhymes were written, the history as presented here is not terribly good. The bit about London Bridge isn’t terrible, at least so far as I know, but it’s the most accurate of the three segments. The actual rhyme is first mentioned in print even before the Great Fire of London, but at least the rhyme is demonstrably about, you know, London Bridge—though variants about other bridges are known in other countries—and so far as I know the history as presented isn’t bad.

Jack Horner, less so. There was a Thomas Horner, steward to the last Abbot of Glastonbury, Richard Whiting. People claim that Whiting sent a Christmas pie to Henry VIII with twelve deeds belonging to the abbey in it in the days leading up to the Dissolution of the Monasteries, hoping Glastonbury would be spared, and that Horner stole one for the estate of Mells. The descendants, meanwhile, claim he paid for it. Either way, this theory wasn’t put forward until the nineteenth century, roughly a century after the rhyme was first recorded, which itself was roughly two centuries after the alleged events. So probably not.

Mary Stuart, now. Well, there was a Mary Stuart. And she was at odds with her dour Scots lords. In part because she was young and Catholic and pretty, but also because they were used to wielding power and she believed that she should. She did marry her cousin, Lord Darnley, and that was a mistake, for a lot of reasons. (Only one of which was that, you know, he was her cousin.) Don’t know where they’re getting the bit about her fooling around with a French poet who got beheaded; I know more than the average person about Mary Stuart and hadn’t heard one.

The Italian musician they mention was her secretary, David Riccio. There’s no real evidence he was more than her secretary, but he was murdered by Darnley and a group of lords while he was clinging to the heavily pregnant Mary’s skirt, which for some mysterious reason is not shown in this short. This did not endear her husband to her. Her relationship with Bothwell is . . . one of the controversies of history, honestly, but I’ve never really believed she was in a relationship with him. I think she was using him for protection.

Anyway, she did eventually flee to England, leaving her toddler son behind as James VI—later James I of England as well—and she was eventually beheaded by her cousin Elizabeth. But she spent the entirety of that time in, if not prison, definitely confinement. And then nearly two hundred years after she was executed for treason—despite her defense, with which I cannot argue, that she couldn’t commit treason if she wasn’t an English subject—a nursery rhyme about a girl named Mary first got written down. So obviously, it’s about her.

I mean, I’m not going to tell you you’re not allowed to believe that these things are about what the short says they’re about. Again, especially “London Bridge is Falling Down,” which is demonstrably about London Bridge. Even if there are also similar versions about various other bridges and it’s not about how rickety it got a century after the first recorded version. But this short is not unlike a lot of folk etymology, like people who tell you that “posh” is an abbreviation for “port out starboard home.” It’s not true, and there’s no reason to believe it’s true. But believe it anyway if you want to, I guess.