‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad.’ Philip Larkin wrote. How? They start early — by reading you nursery rhymes. Why for heaven’s sake! They’re so depressing. So full of doom and gloom. Take Humpty Dumpty for starters: Fat, sits on a wall, falls off, breaks into loads of pieces and is irreparable. Or Little Miss Muffet: sits down for a simple snack of sour milk and gets jumped by a giant spider. Jack and Jill — all they did was walk up a hill to get some water and they both fell, leaving Jack with a nasty head injury. Call out the doctor or get off to casualty? No chance, has to leg it home and fix it with brown paper and vinegar, which can’t have been that successful — it wasn’t just a scratch, the poor bloke broke his head. Then there’s the maid in Sing a Song of Sixpence who had her nose pecked off by a blackbird when all she was doing was hanging out the washing. And as for the poor three blind mice — or as they are now three blind mice with no tails thanks to the carving knife of the farmer’s wife. Do the RSPCA know about this woman?
Even the tiniest of babies is not free from doom and gloom. The most widely-sung lullaby is:
‘Rock-a-bye baby in the tree top.
When the wind blows the cradle will rock.
When the bough breaks the cradle will fall.
And down will come cradle and baby and all.’
So there was a baby in cradle up a tree, a bit of wind blows, the branch breaks and the cradle and the baby fall out of the tree and comes crashing down to earth. Who were the parents of this poor unfortunate child. What were they doing putting a cradle up a tree in a gale? What were they thinking?
John: ‘I’m fed up with rocking the baby, he won’t go to sleep.’
Janet: ‘Tell me about it. I can’t do it I’m too busy. I’ve got to bake bread for tomorrow, milk the goat, put the chickens away…’
John: ‘OK, OK, don’t go on. I get the picture.’
Silence. John carries on rocking the cradle and stares out of the window at a tree swaying backwards and forwards in the wind.
John: ‘I’ve had an idea.’
Janet: ‘Here we go again…’
John: ‘What?’
Janet: ‘Your ideas — they always end in disaster.’
John: ‘That’s not very fair.’
Janet: ‘True though.’
John: ‘No it’s not. One day I’ll invent something and we’ll be rich — you’ll see. We’ll get out of this hovel. You won’t be so damning then!
Janet: ‘What kind of thing? Like the washing machine?’
John: ‘I knew you’d mention that! There was nothing wrong with it. It just needed tweaking.’
Janet: ‘Tweaking! What made you think a donkey pulling a barrel full of stones, water and clothes behind it was going to make your fortune?’
John: ‘It was labour-saving.’
Janet: ‘Labour saving! It took the best part of an hour to load the clothes in the barrel, find the right kind of stones — which, incidentally, you made me carry from the river, and fetch the water from the river, seal the whole thing up, strap it to that contraption you’d tied to the poor donkey, and then watch everything get destroyed: your breeches, my aprons, even my Sunday-best frock! And that barrel was all we had for collecting rainwater. And who is it that now has to walk to the river and carry all our water back in a bucket?’
John: ‘Steady lass, you’ve made your point! But one day, you’ll see. Anyway this idea will work. It’s simple and will give us both a lot of time to do other things.’
Janet: ‘What other things? I don’t want to do other things! I like doing the things I do and the way I do them.’
John: ‘You could relax a bit more.’
Janet: ‘Relax! Why would I want to relax? What do think I am — a man! Anyway, I’ve been standing here talking long enough. I’ve got work to do. I’m going out to the barn. Keep an eye on the little ‘un.’
Janet wraps her shawl around her shoulders and leaves the room.
John sits for a few moments, staring out of the window at the swaying trees. Then he rises from his seat picks up the cradle and carries it outside. The baby has been crying continuously. John walks over to the tree and puts the cradle down. He picks up a ladder and props it against the tree, takes a length of rope that was lying nearby, then picks up the cradle and climbs. He wedges the cradle in the crook of a branch and secures it with the rope, using the kind of knot only a man who thinks he knows about stuff would tie. He then climbs down the ladder and sits on the ground against a nearby tree stump.
The tree sways gently. The cradle sways gently. And for the first time in what seems like an age, the baby stops crying. John realises how exhausted he is. He hasn’t had a good night’s sleep for months. He watches the tree sway rhythmically back and forth, and drifts into a deep slumber, the luxury of which can only be truly appreciated by someone comparatively new to fatherhood.
Janet finishes her chores, the last of which is locking the chickens away for the night. The wind is building gust by gust. She’s worried about how secure the chicken coop would be during the night if the wind got any stronger. She went back into the house, and as John and the baby weren’t there, she presumed John had put the cradle in the handcart and gone for a walk. He’d done it before as the little ‘un seemed to like it, and it helped him go to sleep. Exhausted, she flopped into a chair, and stoked some life into the red embers of the fire with a few twigs. She sat back on the chair and dozed off.
The wind grew. It whistled through the branches of the trees, turning the gentle swaying into violent rocking. The branch creaked under the weight of the cradle and the pressure of the wind. John, still sleeping, drew his knees up to his chin and wrapped his arms around his legs to keep snug. A large gust ripped the roof off the hen-house and twisted the branch of the tree on which the cradle sat. The canon-shot sound it made as it cracked away from the trunk awoke John with a start. His instincts made him look up towards the cradle, which still tied to the branch, was now crashing down through the lower limbs of the tree.
John had tied the cradle to a stout branch. But its weight, and the weight of the cradle were too heavy to withstand the added pressure of the wind. Fortunately, because the branch was so heavy, it dragged the cradle down through the tree and landed on the ground with the cradle still on top. John was already on his feet and running towards it. His heart was in his mouth, he would have cried out but his mouth was as dry as sawdust. He scrambled though the twigs and leaves of the fallen branch and reached the cradle. He didn’t want to look inside at his precious son, but had no choice. He wondered what he would say to Janet. How could he explain.
The baby was still, his eyes closed. John reached into the cradle and picked him up. Upset at being stirred from its slumber, the baby started to cry. John had never experienced such a flood of relief. He hugged his son to his chest and cried like a baby. After a few minutes, he put the boy back in the cradle, which he then untied from the branch, before carrying it back into the house. Janet heard the baby crying as they came in.
Janet: ‘Still not settled then? The handcart usually works?’
John: ‘What? Oh, er, no. It must be the wind.’
Janet: ‘Oh yes, it must be, they never settle when it’s blowin’.’
Janet looked quizzically towards the window. ‘Can you hear that?’
John looked toward the window and listened.
John: ‘What? The chickens?
Janet: ‘Yes, it sounds like they’re out. The roof must have blown off.’
John: ‘Probably, it’s a strong wind tonight. Brought a branch down from that big Horsechestnut.
Janet: ‘Oh well. At least we’ll have some more firewood. Here, pass me the little ‘un, I’ll rock him for a bit. What was your idea, by the way?’
John: ‘What?’
Janet: ‘Earlier — you said you had an idea.’
John: ‘Oh that! On nothing, nothing. Just another stupid thought. I’d better go and sort out the hens and see if I can do anything about that roof.’
Janet: ‘Be careful, it’s blowing a gale out there.’
John: ‘Don’t worry.’
John left the room. Janet absentmindedly picked a small piece of twig caught in the baby’s clothes and tossed it into the fire.
It’s no wonder the British are generally so pessimistic. It’s instilled into us from birth. Maybe we should write a whole new set of optimistic, upbeat nursery rhymes, where good things happen to the characters. Such as:
Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water.
But as they’d climbed, a voice behind said:
“Wait! Came back! Please don’t do that,
I’ll come right round and fit a tap.
There’s no need now to climb that hill.
I’ll sort you out, I’m plumber Bill!
I’ll fit a tap for you for free!
Just brew me up a mug of tea.
A tap for free would save a crown,
Thought Jack — and so they turned around,
And down they got, and off they trot
As fast as they could caper.
Plumber Bill was drinking tea,
From Jack’s tap two hours later.
Mind you, a plumber fitting a tap for free is more like a fairy tale than a nursery rhyme. Feel free to have a go.
1 Comment
October 19, 2008 at 1:35 pm
this is so true…the nursery rhymes always seemed so bad and sad.no wonder kids had nightmares. they tried to hurt us in other ways…when we had a feaver they wrapped us up real hot ( keeping the fever in), when we got a burn they put butter on it..Sizzzzel..( should of been ice.
i loved this post.