The Germans
April 18th, 2007 by adminWhen I was a young child, my grandmother Oma used to bounce me on her knee while reciting a German nursery rhyme which went something like this:
Hoppa hoppa Reiter, wenn er f
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The GermansApril 18th, 2007 by adminWhen I was a young child, my grandmother Oma used to bounce me on her knee while reciting a German nursery rhyme which went something like this:
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April 19th, 2007 at 7:07 am
Wow, that brought back memories! My Opi would sing us the same rhyme.
But what makes this rhyme any different than “Ring Around the Rosie” or any of the countless others that really make no sense or are not really nursery material?
April 22nd, 2007 at 9:46 am
While I don’t know much about the history of Hoopa Rider, I do know somthing about “Ring around the rosie”. It was written at the time of the black plague when many people were dying in Europe. I don’t remember what a rosie is (perhaps corpses), but the posies (“pockets full of posies”) were flowers held by the living to ward off the stench of the dead and “ashes ashes we all fall down” expressed both the preceived reality and fear that everyone might soon fall ill. As such the poem might have been a way of dealing with people’s fears. I wonder if Hoopa Rider has a similar story behind it. Actually the real question is why do we continue these nursery rhymes if we understand them and find them objectionable? I guess nursery material is in the eye of the beholder.
April 22nd, 2007 at 8:01 pm
Actually the “ring around the rosie” thing is just a commonly believed urban legend:
http://www.snopes.com/language/literary/rosie.htm