Atishoo Atishoo, We All Fall Down

We haven't been feeling well this week - some kind of flu bug thing which knocked the three of us sideways.
At about the same time, we got a CD of British Nursery Rhymes. All very nice except when you are delirious with fever all night and "Oranges and Lemons" is floating round and round and round your head backwards and forwards.
On closer inspection it seems that these songs and chants have rather more macabre origins than I had noticed as a tot.
"Ring a ring a roses" is all about The Black Death where "a pocket full of posies" will hide the stench of decaying bodies.
"Mary Mary Quite Contrary" is about Mary Tudor whose "garden grow(s)" because the number of executions means the graveyards are growing and those "Pretty Maids" are infact instruments of torture "all in a row" to effieciently dispatch enemies of the King.
Of course there is also "Remember Remember the Fifth of November" to commemorate the thwarting of terrorist Guy Fawkes' attempt to blow up The Houses of Parliament in 1605. Now every year we make an effigy of Mr Fawkes, sling him on a bonfire and burn him to death. That's healthy but I expect it is cheaper than carting him off to Guantanamo Bay (or even Botany Bay for that matter).

I was trying to remember if there had been any more modern day rhymes which had a similarly dark angle to them. Perhaps the only examples which spring to mind are the playground ditties which I remember and cherish: the one about Hitler and the Albert Hall (you know what I am talking about), the world famous "Milk, milk, lemonade, round the back's where fudge is made" and let's face it - every limerick which kept us informed on the lives of the inhabitants of Nantucket Island, Massachusetts.

I am looking forward to hearing mothers cooing poems over their babies about Joy Riding, Glue sniffing, Saddam or The Ebola Virus. It's a grand thing, Tradition.

Goodnight children, wherever you are...