I was "shocked" the other way round as I'd never heard hokey pokey until I took Little Tyke to playgroup. Not as shocked as I was to hear "Ring around the rosey" instead of "Ring, a ring of roses".
Yes, I know. But it seems to be the usual form sung here and I've seen it in a book of rhymes (complete with an icky picture of children going round a rosebush). I think the book was American not Australian.
That's sad, imo, when a song moves so far away from the original, just because people don't care to listen to what's really being said. Every year I try to get my family to sing the correct lyrics to one of our favourite Christmas songs (written sometime in the 19th century), but they just don't bother. *sigh* Why am I wired this way? I wish I was able to ignore it, but I'm not.
To add to you distress, most american children (myself included) don't find out the background stories to their nursery rhymes until their late teens or early adulthood. And yes, I was grossed out.
I don't think most British children do either but that one is used for teaching about the plague so often that that is one we do know. But here in Australia children the history younger children are taught is about the colonisation of Australia, so there's no reason why they should sing the right words, I suppose.
We learned it in English lessons in primary school. Quite a few nursery rhymes seem to be based on historic happenings (like the plague). This is about the plague, getting rosey rings is a symptom, posies of herbs were used to protect against the plague or to heal, and the sneezing is the final step before you fall down and die. At least, that's what we were taught, maybe the scholars have changed their minds?
*shudders* Glad I didn't learn THAT in primary school. I would have had nightmares, and started looking for rosy rings on me and others. Yikes! What a theme to do a nursery rhyme on. I'm beginning to see why the Brits are famous for their "stiff* upper lips. It was probably a literally stiff lip at some point.
I think they have: at any rate, the most recent things I've seen about it (QI, a book I got for Christmas, and er... other things I've forgotten) point out that there isn't a mention of the rhyme before the early 19th century and that red circles and sneezing are not symptoms of the plague (unlike buboes in the armpit etc.). Not that I've actually looked into it in detail myself, though.
So much for believing I knew... I learned that it was way older than that, that it originated around the time of the plague, but someone obviously pulled the leg of a whole generation of Norwegian kids. Heh - what a prank... *shakes head*
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