Sing a Song of Sixpence

Illustration Four and Twenty Blackbirds Baked in a Pie
By Scott Gustafson
From: from "Sing a Song of Sixpence"
Illustration for Favorite Nursery Rhymes: Mother Goose Collection

Sing a song of sixpence

Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full of rye,
Four and twenty blackbirds
Baked in a pie.

When the pie was opened
The birds began to sing
Wasn't that a dainty dish
To set before the king?

The king was in the counting-house
Counting out his money,
The queen was in the parlor
Eating bread and honey,

The maid was in the garden
Hanging out the clothes.
Along came a blackbird
And snipped off her nose.

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Laura Wood at The Thinking Housewife writes:

In his 2011 book, School-Induced Dyslexia and How It Deforms a Child’s Brain, the late author and education reformer Samuel L. Blumenfeld argued that the whole language or “progressive” method of reading instruction had caused a massive increase in illiteracy, especially among blacks, and a skyrocketing number of diagnosed cases of “dyslexia.”
Elementary school children in public schools are taught to read today by memorizing a few dozen “sight,” mostly one-syllable, words. The traditional phonics method involves sounding out the letters and gradually progressing to bigger words.

I don't think it is just a reading problem anymore. All of childhood "education" has been diluted to make children "feel good."

Feisty children are created from feisty stories.

For some reason, I thought of "Sing a Song of Sixpence" when I read Laura's post. Perhaps it is the melody of the nursery rhyme, or it is the lovely little birds that I hear along my way to the bus stop or the store, hiding between the leafless tree branches.

Or it is the blackbirds themselves. Who has sympathy of blackbirds that are baked in a pie? If it were: "Four and twenty sparrows baked in a pie" it might conjure up a more sympathetic feeling. Blackbirds, even ones I see and try to photograph, don't get my sympathy.

So I think the purpose of nursery rhymes is to subtly, and sometimes less subtly, teach young children about the "pecking order" of the world. That there is good and that there is evil. Even in the animal world. That some are strong and others weaker.

It is interesting that the two characters of "power" in Sing a Song of Sixpence, the king and the queen, display this order so very clearly.

The king was in the counting-house
Counting out his money

and

The queen was in the parlor
Eating bread and honey

How frivolous to eat a sweet snack and alone and separate. How indulgent!

Of course the king could be some megalomaniac only interested in his gold coins, but he is the one charged with the important role. He has his kingdom's wealth to be concerned with.

Such clearly defined roles of men and women and our position in the natural world, with few niceties (we can bake blackbirds in a pie) might cure our disoriented and insipid youth which pledges its time and intellect on "equality/environmentalism/anti-racism" and any number of "global causes" of its strange belief that all is about niceness (not necessarily goodness).

And even those blackbirds surmounted the heat of the oven and came out chirping, alive and well.