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The closest anyone has come to being an adopted daughter.

Friday, February 4, 2011

Two nursery rhymes

There are two nursery rhymes that I have always felt like dissecting, since I've been under the perpetual assumption that they hold a deep, dark meaning beyond what is apparent to the innocent eye:

One of them goes like this:
One, two, buckle my shoe.
Three, four, knock at the door.
Five, six, pick up the sticks.
Seven, eight, lay them straight.
Nine, ten, a big fat hen.
Eleven, twelve, dig and delve.
Thirteen, fourteen, draw the curtain,
Fifteen, sixteen, the maid's in the kitchen,
Seventeen, eighteen, she's in waiting,
Nineteen, twenty, my stomach's empty.

Now, consider just the even lines - the ones in red. Get what I mean?

***

If this one seems a tad obscure, then how about this one?

Ding, dong, bell,
Pussy’s in the well.
Who put her in?
Little Johnny thin.
Who pulled her out?
Little Tommy stout.

In case you're not aware that the word "dong" has an alternative meaning, it's here.

7 comments:

  1. Think how lucky oversexed Vietnamese women are..they can get a dong whenever they want..

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  2. Loved the counting one. Amader syllabus-e obosshyo 11-20 ta chhilo na, tai ami hen obdhi-i jani. IMHO scariest rhyme holo "rock a bye, baby, on the tree-to..." ta.

    ReplyDelete
  3. your wifeys favourite,eh?

    ReplyDelete
  4. What a naughty boy was that!

    ReplyDelete
  5. There are lots of words for 'naked' in Bengali, especially if you're a little boy and still surrounded by some remnants of baby talk -- langto, nanto, nanto-bhanto, nano, nangu etc.

    So I suppose I oughtn't think it was deliberate when Rahul's grandfather asked him to identify a car on the road and he promptly answered, "Langto!"

    ReplyDelete

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