Essay Database

Mother Goose Rhymes and the Middle Ages Medieval children learned rhymes and songs from the oral repetition of adults. As many as a quarter of the 550 texts in the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes are accurately dated before the 15th Century; many were only oral rhymes and not written down until decades after they were first popularly recited. In 1978, Helen Cooper pointed to a much larger body of potential medieval nursery rhymes, which she collected …

…their sheep, kings that were dishonest and about the influence of the church. There are also an innumerable amount of rhymes that discuss the evil superstitions, pagan mysticism, and witchcraft of the Middle Ages. When most people read to their children from a “Mother Goose” book, the rhymes seem innocent enough. Nevertheless, we can be sure that some seemingly innocent rhymes still read today have their origins in the dark days of the Middle Ages.