The creators behind timeless verses

Who said Humpty Dumpty was an egg? Stories of 10 ageless nursery rhymes

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We have been singing the same nursery rhymes to little kids for years and years, often without considering the words we are repeating. Some of these songs, narrating the adventures of farm animals, stars, and itsy bitsy spiders, have very cryptic lyrics that we learned as infants and never again questioned. Who wrote these rhymes? How long have humans been singing them to one another? In this article, we unveil the stories behind 10 timeless verses.

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Do you know the five stanzas of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star?" Very few people do. The ultimate lullaby belongs to the opening verses of "The Star", a poem written in 1806 by English author Jane Taylor. The poem was originally published in Rhymes for the Nursery, a collection by her and her sister Ann.

The couplets are set to the very famous French melody officially called "Ah! vous dirai-je, maman" ("Ah, will I tell you, mom"). It’s a universal classic from 1761; Mozart himself had composed a set of variations based on the melody. However, it wasn’t until thirty years after the Taylor sisters’ publication that another book proposed singing their poem to the catchy music. The nursery rhyme "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep" uses a variant of the same tune.

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Nowhere in the poem is it mentioned that Humpty Dumpty is an anthropomorphic egg. The lyrics are enigmatic and many attempts have been made to link them to historical figures, like kings or battle heroes. The first version of the rhyme appeared in writing in 1797 in Juvenile Amusements, a music collection by English composer Samuel Arnold. It is believed that "Humpty Dumpty" was 18th-century slang for a clumsy person.

Why an egg, then? Some believed the poem was a riddle to which the answer was that Humpty Dumpty was not a human, but some fragile thing. It was none other than Lewis Carrol, author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, who first depicted Humpty Dumpty explicitly as looking like an egg. The character appears on a wall in the popular book’s 1871 sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, where Alice meets him and points out how much like an egg he looks.

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"Mary Had a Little Lamb" is based on a true story. It was first published in 1830 by American writer Sarah Josepha Hale. She was a teacher who schooled girls and boys in her hometown, Newport, New Hampshire. One day, a student named Mary showed up accompanied by her pet lamb. This incident, the children’s reactions, and the obvious affection between Mary and her lamb —who "followed her everywhere she went"—, eventually inspired Hale to write a three-stanza poem called Mary’s Lamb.

In the same year, a composer from Boston, Lowell Mason, rearranged the poem and set it to music to have a singable version. We still use the words Mason wrote, but the melody we sing today is not the one he composed. We usually sing it to an 1867 tune known as "Merrily We Roll Along."

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For context about how old this song is, Mozart wouldn’t be born until 50 years after its earliest known version. "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" appears in a 1706 opera by English writer and composer Thomas d'Urfey. The play, The Kingdom of the Birds, included a song called "In the Fields in Frost and Snow", which was a very near version of the song we know today, down to the iconic "Here a Boo, there a Boo, every-where a Boo".

It is unknown whether this was already a popular song that d’Urfey quoted in his play. What we know, though, is that after his opera the song became very widespread, and eventually became a folk song with varying versions in Britain, Ireland, and North America.

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This one was conceived from the start as a song. The rhyme has only four lines. The first printing of the song is dated 1852 and attributed to author and teacher Eliphalet Oram Lyte. The melody, however, was very different from the one that was later popularized. It wasn’t until 1881 that the tune as we know it today was attached to the words.

The current version of Row, Row, Row Your Boat is intended to be sung as a four-part round canon. That means that the melody of each line can be combined to harmonize with any of the others. That’s why it’s usually taught to children and popularly used to teach choir singing.

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Children from as far back as the Late Middle Ages might have already been singing this song. The earliest printed version of nursery rhymes about the London Bridge falling appeared in England in 1744 in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, though the rhyme may have been sung long before this.

There are many myths behind the lyrics of this song, from claiming that the bridge falls because of Viking attacks, to stating that the "fair Lady" mentioned is Virgin Mary.

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This beloved nursery folk song was only born in 1938 when it was published as "The Bus" in the American Childhood magazine. Verna Hills, born in 1898 in Boston, conceived this tune to distract the little ones during long bus rides. That’s why the repetitive yet catchy lyrics enlist parts of the moving bus while adding some mimic or sound to go with it. "The Bus" eventually became a folk song also popular in Canada, the UK, and Australia.

The song is believed to be based on "Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush", an old English nursery rhyme about a group of young ones going about everyday chores. This one had been set to music from an opera published in mid-1700s London. Its melody and rhythm are very similar to the one we know today.

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Also known as the "Spider Song," this rhyme has received different names throughout English-speaking countries. Its earliest appearance seems to have been in Arthur Walbridge North’s 1910 book Camp and Camino in Lower California, except that it mentions a "blooming, bloody spider" instead.

In varying versions and regions, the spider has also been called "eency weency" and "teeny weeny." Other countries added further variations to one of the most famous nursery rhymes ever. In France, it’s a gypsy spider; in the Netherlands, it’s a beetle; and in Norway, the spider is called Peter.

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The timeless finger-counting nursery rhyme was designed to teach children coordination and dexterity. Famously, the words match the narration of the fates of 5 pigs while folding the fingers on a child’s hand one by one.

The first time the poem appeared in writing was in 1728, in a medley called The Nurses Song. Since then, over the decades, varying versions have been written. Some say it may have been inspired by "To Market, To Market," also known as "To Market, To Market, to Buy a Fat Pig," another folk nursery rhyme with a first version that dates back as far as 1598.

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You probably have noticed that the iconic ABC song uses the same melody as the aforementioned "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star"; Ah! vous dirai-je, maman. However, the lyrics were not applied to the melody until 1835, when Boston publisher Charles Bradlee decided to borrow the familiar tune to sing the alphabet to it, as a strategy to help children learn letters through a catchy and well-known melody. It became a preschool classic, and it has been adapted to be used in many languages other than English.

OVER-EXTENDED CUTS

Cinematic Marathons: The 10 Longest Movies Ever Made

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Prepare your popcorn and settle in for a cinematic marathon because today we are delving into the realm of epic movie lengths. From intricate historical dramas to weird avant-garde experiments, these films push the boundaries of both time and storytelling.

Get ready to test your endurance, and join us to explore 10 of the longest movies ever made.

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A four-part epic that spans the whole 20th century, "Siberiade" tells the story of a small Siberian village through various generations as it experiences enormous societal and technological changes over time. Lasting almost five hours, "Siberiade"- like most Soviet films of the era - is kind of slow-paced, and the many characters that keep changing as they grow old over the course of the movie can be a bit complicated to follow sometimes, but its captivating story of love and resilience more than makes up for it.

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Ingmar Bergman's semi-autobiographical masterpiece follows the tumultuous lives of two siblings in early 20th-century Sweden as they navigate love, loss, and changes in the family. Originally conceived as a television miniseries, a shorter version was created later for cinematic release. However, the TV version was released as an entire movie, making it one of the longest cinematic films in history.

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This intense Italian drama unfolds over six hours, following two brothers, Nicola and Matteo, as they go their separate ways through decades of Italian history and societal changes. A beautiful film about youth, love, and the difficult times lived in post-war Europe, it won many awards, including the most prestigious prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

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French director Jacques Rivette's epic masterpiece, "Out 1" unfolds over nearly 13 hours, weaving together multiple storylines and characters in a labyrinthine narrative. A milestone of avant-garde cinema, "Out 1" challenges viewers to surrender to its immersive world - but, if you are not feeling like spending half a day of your life unraveling it, there is fortunately a somewhat shorter version called "Out 1: Spectre that is only four hours long."

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As the title matter-of-factly implies, "The Longest Most Meaningless Movie in the World" attempts to be exactly that and nothing more. No actual footage was shot for the film, which is entirely comprised of unrelated outtakes, found reels, commercials, newsreels, stock footage, and strips of undeveloped film. I mean, you get the idea… maybe you can just skip this one, unless you are into watching a malfunctioning satellite TV for two days straight.

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This humorously titled behemoth of a movie spans a staggering 87 hours - 3 days and 15 hours, mind you. In fact, at the time of its release in 1987, it was recognized by the Guinness World Records as the longest film ever. However, the film was created mostly to document a performance art piece by American artist L.D. Groban, who reads his 4,080-page poem called "A Cure for Insomnia" over the span of three days - and the footage is only occasionally spliced with clips from heavy metal and adult videos.

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Named after the equally intriguing and lovely Russian "matryoshka" dolls, "Matrjoschka" is an experimental film made by German artist Karin Hoerler. The movie has no explicit plot, as all sequences are based on a single photo. First, it shows a boy riding a bicycle, then a street, houses, garages, and finally, the sky. However, movements are so extremely slow that they seem like static images.

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Finally, a sci-fi movie! Well, technically… Despite being almost unwatchable by human standards, this strangely alluring film made by Danish art collective Superflex explores the transformation of human structures, as it shows how Helsinki's Stora Enso headquarters (a local wood-processing factory) would decay over the next few millennia.

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Luckily for you, you couldn't watch this one even if you wanted to. Swedish director Anders Weberg's final film was expected to have a running time of 720 hours (a whole month, if you are wondering) and was scheduled for release in December 2020, but he never went through with his promise. The day came, and the movie never appeared. Funnily enough, while the full movie never saw the light of the day, the director did release a trailer... a seven-hour-long one! - what else could one expect, right?

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If modern consumerist society has a plot, it is certainly the plot of this monumental "documentary" made by Erika Magnusson and Daniel Andersson. The film follows the journey of a simple electronic pedometer in reverse chronological order around the world, from the store where it is sold in Stockholm to the Chinese factory where it was originally manufactured. Its length mirrors the complexity and scale of global commerce, and if you ever wondered where manufactured goods come from, this might be the perfect film for you.