Friday, May 2, 2008

Three Blind Mice



Who knew? Justin and I have both realized that once you become a parent there are some songs that maybe you don't really know all the lyrics to.

We began singing Three Blind Mice to Carson the other day and debated on a few of the lyrics. So, handy ol' internet I looked them up. (what did we EVER do before the internet?)

Did you know the song three blind mice was about Queen Mary I of England executing three Protestant bishops. Lately we have found most of the sweet little songs and stories we grew up on were not so sweet.

Here are the original lyrics if you are interested. A little more graphic than our song today.

The first publication of this rhyme was written by Thomas Ravenscroft in 1609. The lyrics there are:
Three Blinde Mice,
three Blinde Mice,
Dame Iulian,
Dame Iulian,
The Miller and his merry olde Wife,
shee scrapte her tripe licke thou the knife.

The earliest lyrics don't talk about directly killing the three blind mice and are dated after Queen Mary died, however, "she scrapte her tripe licke thou the knife" implies they were prepared and consumed if not a reference to tasting the blood of a slain adversary. (she scraped off the entrails and the knife was licked).

Who was that very popular guy who had the show in the 80's and he would say "Things that Make You Go HMMM."

BTW- look up Pop Goes the Weasel sometime. That one is interesting too:)

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting. HMMMMMMM!