Nursery Rhymes and the History Behind Them

We all have grown up reading nursery rhymes and have all learnt those typical British ones handed down to us from our colonial rulers. Generations have grown up by reading Ba Ba Black Sheep or London Bridge is Falling Down without even knowing their context or the reason for the strange happenings in those rhymes. We have never questioned why was the London Bridge Falling Down? Who was that strange and funny fellow who had been painted like an egg for ages called Humpty Dumpty and why was the poor man thrown down from the stairs who refused to say his prayers? The paper tries to bring to you the history behind some of these famous nursery rhymes that we as the Indians have grown up by learning it, but we naturally as children could never fathom the meaning camouflaged within the lines and never knew as adults. The paper is an attempt to revive our childhood memories with a deeper understanding of the events that might have triggered our imaginative minds to weave them into seemingly nonsense ditties. The paper is also an attempt to sensitise the readers to the fact that the nursery rhymes that are still present in our educational system, which need to be revised, and we need to invent our own rhymes.