Alison Croggon wrote:
> Ring a ring a rosie, which I used to chant as a child, goes a-tishoo!
> (not ashes) - at least in the version I knew. Kids don't sing these
> things any more, which is a significant shift in children's culture..
> One thing I truly regret is that in the past two decades traditional
> nursery rhymes have all but disappeared.
>
I just remembered another context for this nursery rhyme that made it
even more frightening because of how it can be used in drama. I don't
know Buecher's *Woyzeck* but am quite familiar with Alban Berg's
operatic adaptation, *Wozzeck*. After Wozzeck has murdered his mistress
Marie and then drowned in a lake trying to retrieve the knife, in the
morning the children of the garrison town are singing a version of the
rhyme:
DIE SPIELENDEN KINDER
Ringel, Ringel, Rosenkranz, Ringelreih'n!
Ringel, Ringel, Rosenkranz, Rin ...
They are interrupted by one child rushing in to announce that Marie's
body has been found. Then the cruelest of moments: a child bludgeons
Marie's and Wozzeck's uncomprehending child with the truth, followed by
the child's (call it) reaction:
DRITTES KIND
(zu Mariens Knaben)
Du! Dein Mutter ist tot!
MARIENS KNABE
(immer reitend)
Hopp, hopp! Hopp, hopp! Hopp, hopp!
At which point the opera ends.
ken
--
Ken Wolman http://awfulrowing.wordpress.com/ http://www.petsit.com/content317832.html
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"All writers are hunters, and parents are the most available prey."--Francine du Plessix Gray
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