Jack and Jill went up the hill/To fetch a pail of water/Jack fell down and broke his crown/And Jill came tumbling after Why would anyone go up a hill for water when water travels downhill…unless this really isn’t a tale of liquid refreshment and unsure footing. One common interpretation is that it’s about the beheading of King Louis XVI (“lost his crown”) and his queen Marie Antoinette (“who came tumbling after”) during the French Revolution. But the small town of Kilmersdon, England proudly claims (to the point they make it a tourist attraction) that the poem is about a couple in 1697 who used to sneak up the hill for some alone time (making “fetch a pail of water” one of the more disturbing euphemisms for “sex”). The story goes that the woman got pregnant, the man died from a falling rock, and then the woman died in childbirth, thus resulting in one of the most depressing nursery rhymes ever since “I Shot Little Jack Horner Just to Watch Him Die.”
Little Miss Muffet/Sat on a tuffet,/Eating her curds and whey/Along came a spider/Who sat down beside her/And frightened Miss Muffet away Girl eats cottage cheese. Girl loses her freaking mind upon seeing a bug. The sale of tuffets (footstools) plummets across Europe. Seriously, not every one of these things lends itself to deeper meaning.
ROCK A BY BABY, ON A TREE TOP. Pfff. What kind of sadistic fuck would leave a baby hanging from a tree?