Creepy Nursery Rhyme/Tale of the Day

[dr. locrian]

Even as a child, I knew the following nursery rhyme was repellant:

"This Old Man"

This old man, he played one,
He played knick-knack on my tongue
With a knick-knack, paddy whack,
Give a dog a bone,
This old man came rolling home.

This old man, he played two,
He played knick-knack on my shoe.
With a knick-knack, paddy whack,
Give a dog a bone,
This old man came rolling home.

This old man, he played three,
He played knick-knack on my knee.
With a knick-knack, paddy whack,
Give a dog a bone,
This old man came rolling home.

This old man, he played four,
He played knick-knack on my door
With a knick-knack, paddy whack,
Give a dog a bone,
This old man came rolling home.

This old man, he played five,
He played knick-knack on my thigh
With a knick-knack, paddy whack,
Give a dog a bone,
This old man came rolling home.

This old man, he played six,
He played knick-knack with some sticks.
With a knick-knack, paddy whack,
Give a dog a bone,
This old man came rolling home.

This old man, he played seven,
He played knick-knack up in heaven.
With a knick-knack, paddy whack,
Give a dog a bone,
This old man came rolling home.

This old man, he played eight,
He played knick-knack on my pate
With a knick-knack, paddy whack,
Give a dog a bone,
This old man came rolling home.

This old man, he played nine,
He played knick-knack on my spine.
With a knick-knack, paddy whack,
Give a dog a bone,
This old man came rolling home.

This old man, he played ten,
He played knick-knack on my shin.
With a knick-knack, paddy whack,
Give a dog a bone,
This old man came rolling home.

Note that this is the version of the nursery rhyme/song of which I'm familiar. I know there are more benign, extant versions of it, but this is more or less the one I always heard repeated when I was a child.

NO--I do NOT want that old man playing knick-knack with my knee, shin, thigh, spine, and/or most certainly not with my tongue!

Are children really supposed to be lulled into a false sense of security by the silly image of that whacky old trickster "rolling home" at the end of each stanza?

It's really an extraordinary piece, and I can't imagine that I'm the only person with a warped enough mind to read the truly disturbing subtext throughout this old chestnut of a nursery rhyme. My strong feelings of repulsion towards it (and the old man's hidden agenda) were evoked immediately upon hearing it as a child; not simply in retrospect.

Presently, I can't help but to be put in mind of two Ligotti pieces: one poetry ("He Made Them Laugh Sometimes") and one prose ("The Frolic"). One may argue that the implied threat in "This Old Man" is of a more purely visceral (and very likely sexual) nature than the ones in the Ligotti pieces, but lines like "He played knick-knack up in heaven" do suggest that the old man has a more mysterious, spectral quality.

At any rate, I won't be reading this one to my kid.