【英语时差8,16】Nursery Rhyme: ‘Mary Mary’ 儿歌《玛丽小姐真倔强》（在线收听）

Nursery Rhyme: ‘Mary Mary’ 儿歌《玛丽小姐真倔强》

Children singing: Mary Mary quite contrary, how does your garden grow? With silver bells and cockle shells and pretty maids all in a row. 

Andrea: Yes, it’s a well-known English nursery rhyme.  Morag Styles has been studying the meaning behind popular nursery rhymes. 

Mary would appear to be Mary Queen of Scots with her gay French background and her Popish inclinations. And of course the pretty maids would be the four ladies who were her ladies-in-waiting. And perhaps the cockle shells were the decorations on a dress given to her by the Dauphin. 

I think it’s a bit like Mary is showing off about her garden a bit.The garden sounds really pretty and like she’s really rich and clever and sparkly. 

There is a golden age of nursery rhymes in a sense from the reign of about Henry the Eighth. So you’re talking early 16th century. Mary, Mary Quite Contrary in its current form only dates back to the 18th century so it’s clearly written a long time after Mary Queen of Scots existed. 

People are always trying to work out the derivation of nursery rhymes and there’s no hope of ever identifying the true source of more than about a handful of nursery rhymes. 

Andrea: Morag says that it’s very difficult to work out the derivation of nursery rhymes. Maybe it was Mary had a little lamb: “Its fleece was white as snow. And everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go”.And I wonder what the story is behind that one.