Creepy Nursery Rhyme/Tale of the Day

dr. locrian

dr. locrian

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I cannot think of my childhood without hearing voices, deep, heavily-accented, instructive German voices.

I hear the voice of my father reading to me from Struvelpater, the German children's tale about a messy boy who refuses to cut his hair or his fingernails. Struvelpater's hair grows so long that birds nest in it, and his fingernails become so long that his hands become useless. He fares better, though, than the other characters in the book who don't listen to their parents. Augustus, for instance, refuses to eat soup for four days, becomes as thin as a thread, and on the fifth day he is dead. Fidgety Philip tilts his dinner chair like a rocking horse until his chair falls backwards; the hot food falls on top of him, and suffocates him under the weight of the table cloth. The worst story by far for me is that of Conrad, an incorrigible thumb-sucker, who couldn't stop sucking his thumb and whose mother warned him that a great, long, red-legged scissor-man would--and yes, did--snip both his thumbs off.
​
"Between the Drafts"
Nancy Sommers
College Composition and Communication, Vol. 43, No. 1 (Feb., 1992), pp. 23-31
(article consists of 9 pages)
Published by: National Council of Teachers of English
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/357362
 
Last night, I read the following excellent review by William Darragh in Fortean Times of the 2009 Oxford University Press edition of the fairy tales of Charles Perrault (1628-1703):

51lTeYU6zbL.jpg
​

“Charles Perrault benefitted from the policy of promoting commoners that gradually gave rise to a monarchist meritocracy in Louis XIV’s France. He became an aide to Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the emotionally frozen but driven minister of finance who—despite the king’s lunatic extravagance—brought France back from the edge of bankruptcy. The first Moral of “Puss in Boots,” as Betts points out in his excellent introduction, could have been written with the author in mind: “Young men, when all is said and done / Will find sharp wits and commonsense / Worth more than an inheritance.” After Colbert’s death, he put his considerable energies into the newly instituted Académie Française. He was critical of classical education, and believed that European myths were as valuable as their Roman and Greek equivalents. This, and his conviction that children should receive a moral education from such tales, led to the first Contes.

Perrault’s tales are the stuff of kiddie nightmares (incest, murder, sexual abuse, cannibalism and abandonment), with an improving Moral coming right after the ‘happy ever after’ ending which, itself, comes after the deaths of various minor characters or the protagonist’s drawn-out miseries.

Bruno Bettelheim theorised that fairy tales are psychodramas that enable children to process and overcome their very real fears. “Hop o’ My Thumb”, the tale of children abandoned because their parents could not feed them, had a certain plausibility at a time when the first of two massive famines was devastating the country; two million died in just over a decade. The threat of being eaten appears in several tales. Little Red Riding Hood, who in Perrault’s version does not survive the encounter with her grandmother’s killer, also warns against sexually predatory adults. The wolf, with his impressively large parts, lying ‘naked’ in her grandmother’s bed, hardly needs a Freud to untangle the meaning; and in any case, the Moral warns that nice girls can be “…caught/ By wolves who take them off to eat”. “Donkey-Skin” (510B in the Aarne-Thompsdon-Uther system which groups similar tales and enables one to examine, for instance, Staporola’s, Basile’s and the Grimm Brothers’ variants) is the tale of a widower who wants to marry his daughter; the Moral concludes, in a slightly ‘hey, what can you do?’ way, that “…love deranged defies all sense /Against it, reason is a poor defence”. Even if you accept that children love fairy tales’ gorier aspects, this is top-shelf stuff and – pace Bettelheim – not totally cathartic.

This is a new translation by Christopher Betts, and it’s magnificent. The verse and the later prose tales leap off the page, as do the wonderful Doré illustrations. The spread of the ogre cutting his daughters’ throats (complete with bird carcass on the bedding) is particularly striking. In addition to the fine introduction, there are notes and appendixes. Even if the fruit of your loins is a brutal little thug, this is definitely a book for adults.”


Hope this will be of interest to you!
 
Something for parents to sing to their children at bedtime:
There was a man of double deed
Sowed his garden full of seed.
And when that seed began to grow
'Twas like a garden full of snow.
When the snow began to melt
'Twas like a ship without a belt.
When the ship began to sail
'Twas like a bird without a tail.
When the bird began to fly
'Twas like an eagle in the sky.
When the sky began to roar
'Twas like a lion at the door.
When the door began to crack
'Twas like a stick across my back.
When my back began to smart
'Twas like a penknife in my heart.
When my heart began to bleed
'Twas death and death and death indeed.​
 
Excellent, Viva June! Never seen or heard that one!

I'll see your rhyme and raise you this old chestnut:
Oranges and lemons,
Say the bells of St. Clement's

You owe me five farthings,
Say the bells of St. Martin's

When will you pay me?
Say the bells of Old Bailey.

When I grow rich,
Say the bells of Shoreditch.

When will that be?
Say the bells of Stepney

I do not know,
Says the great bell of Bow

Here comes a candle to light you to bed
And here comes a chopper to chop off your head!
​
or--heck, why not--how 'bout this one:

Ladybird, ladybird fly away home,
Your house is on fire and your children are gone,
All except one,
And her name is Ann,
And she hid under the baking pan.

​
So much for one rhyme/tale "of the day"!
 
Dr. Locrian said:
Excellent, Viva June! Never seen or heard that one!
Click to expand...
I shan't invade this thread with talk of Current 93, but it's the song "Panzer Ruin (In the Hands of Gillespie)" from the Looney Runes ep, rereleased on then SixSixSix: SickSickSick compilation of Current 93 ep's. It's probably some kind of traditional, or a reworking of one, though. That's my guess, at least.
 
It is indeed a traditional rhyme. My source is Al Alvarez, who quotes it in The Savage God: A Study of Suicide. I have never heard that particular C93 song.
 
'The door flew open, in he ran,
The great, long, red-legged scissor-man.
Oh! children, see! the tailor's come
And caught out little Suck-a-Thumb.'

daumen3.gif


That is simply terrifying.
-Jimmy
 
Just look at him! There he stands,
With his nasty hair and hands.
See! his nails are never cut;
They are grim'd as black as soot;
And the sloven, I declare,
Never once has comb'd his hair;
Any thing to me is sweeter
Than to see Shock-headed Peter.
 
Aetherwing said:
'The door flew open, in he ran,
The great, long, red-legged scissor-man.
Oh! children, see! the tailor's come
And caught out little Suck-a-Thumb.'

daumen3.gif


That is simply terrifying.
-Jimmy
Click to expand...

Yes--by Yog--that is terrifying. I'm reminded of the sole, really effective scare in The Exorcist III.
 
Dr. Locrian said:
Aetherwing said:
'The door flew open, in he ran,
The great, long, red-legged scissor-man.
Oh! children, see! the tailor's come
And caught out little Suck-a-Thumb.'

daumen3.gif


That is simply terrifying.
-Jimmy
Click to expand...

Yes--by Yog--that is terrifying. I'm reminded of the sole, really effective scare in The Exorcist III.
Click to expand...

Oh, I love the Suck-a-Thumb piece. I remember it being mentioned in another thread.

And, oh yes, I do remember that scene from The Exorcist III. It was very powerful. A pity that the film itself was so uneven.
 
Viva June said:
It is indeed a traditional rhyme. My source is Al Alvarez, who quotes it in The Savage God: A Study of Suicide. I have never heard that particular C93 song.
Click to expand...
You haven't missed much. It's rather awful. Though the SixSixSix: SickSickSick collection of ep's is, overall, very good.
 
Dr. Locrian said:
Nemonymous said:
I wrote this in 1967:Wordhunger
Click to expand...

Say, Des: I like this piece quite a lot! Reminds me of some of Grant Morrison's better stream-of-consciousness writing. Kind of gets under the skin! Thanks for sharing!
Click to expand...

Thanks, Dr L. very gratifying.

Just noticed - by using the search facility - that GSC quoted from it as a Clown Quote of the Day among many other DFL quotes-of-the-day* he once kindly made on TLO a year or so ago, i.e. second from the bottom here:
http://www.ligotti.net/showthread.php?t=1950&highlight=lexophony&page=7

*all links for them HERE, not all quotes made by GSC, a few by other quote harvesters. :)
 
Aetherwing said:
I just mentioned 'The Hobyahs' over on the Doc L interview thread, and they certainly seem (to me, at any rate) to fit on this one, as well:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/meft/meft27.htm

Nasty little buggers--or boogers--or bugbears.
-Jimmy
Click to expand...

Fascinating, guy. you know, that little tale would've been even more effective if not for the (I thought) rather silly illustrations. To me, the Hobyah's should have more in common with Wilbur Whateley (also famously vulnerable to canines) than with--well--gremlins (of the Merrie Melodies variety):

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Of course, mentioning Merrie Melodies in the context of this thread brings one particular cartoon to mind: 'Bottles.' Too bad I cannot locate a link for it.

I agree about the illustrations in the Hobyah tale, of course. They don't match the images of the little Horrors in my mind.
 
[SIZE=+1]I can't help but add some Edward Gorey...


Excerpts from THE LISTING ATTIC by: Edward Gorey [/SIZE]
There was a young curate whose brain
Was deranged from the use of cocaine;
He lured a small child
To a copse dark and wild,
Where he beat it to death with his cane.


Each night Father fills me with dread
When he sits at the foot of my bed;
Id not mind that he speaks
In gibbers and squeaks,
But for seventeen years he's been dead.


To his clubfooted child said Lord Stipple,
As he poured his post-prandial tipple,
"Your mother's behaviour
Gave pain to Our Savior
And that's why He made you a cripple."
 
One of my favourite nursery rhymes that my mother said to me in my childhood. I in turn said it to my own children.

Ding dong bell
Pussy's in the well
Who put her in?
Little Johnny Flynn
Who pulled her out?
Little Tommy Stout
What a naughty boy was that
Try to drown poor Pussycat,
Who ne'er did any harm
But killed all the mice
In the Farmer's barn! ​

PS: I've read 'Lexophony' aloud here:
http://www.ligotti.net/local_links.php?catid=1&linkid=62​
 
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