The idea, of course, comes from the traditional nursery rhyme, “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep,” which is one of the most beloved and fun kids’ songs to sing of the past century.

What's the meaning of Peter Pumpkin Eater or Baa Baa Black Sheep? Here are the bizarre hidden meanings of 15 nursery rhymes you remember from childhood.

"Pact has established that children sing a variety of descriptive words in the nursery rhyme to turn the song into an action rhyme," the charity said in a statement. "They sing happy, sad, bouncing, ...

But now nursery rhymes such as Baa, Baa, Black Sheep have gone woke – with the words changed to reflect a kinder attitude towards animals.

Yes, that fictional grande dame of kiddie poems has got a bit of a dark streak, as evidenced by the unexpectedly sinister theories surrounding the origins of these 11 well-known nursery rhymes. 1.

So how did the myth of this nursery rhyme describing the Black Plague arise? We can look to James Leasor, who as recently as 1961, wrote the book, The Plague and the Fire.

That’s when the earliest nursery rhymes seem to date from, although the ‘golden age’ came later, in the 18th Century, when the canon of classics that we still hear today emerged and flourished.

"Ring a Ring o' Roses" is a nursery rhyme many of us remember fondly from childhood, often sung while holding hands and ...

This nursery rhyme began about 1347 and derives from the not-so-delightful Black Plague, which killed over twenty-five million people in the fourteenth century.

Mother Goose has got a bit of a dark streak, as evidenced by the unexpectedly sinister theories surrounding the origins of these well-known nursery rhymes.

Sex, death and cruelty. Chris Roberts, the author of Heavy Words Lightly Thrown: The Reason Behind the Rhyme, tells Debbie Elliott what lurks beneath the surface of those verses we learned as ...