The War On Mother Goose

So, this guy;

Went to war against this woman;

And nearly won.

I've been reading through the Oxford Book of Nursery Rhymes and its magnificent (and extremely acidic about academics and writers fucking about with imaginary or deluded nursery rhyme origins), from there comes the following;

"Higglety, pigglety, pop!

The dog has eaten the mop;

The pig's in a hurry,

The cats in a flurry,

Higgletyl, pigglety, pop!

This rhyme, orally collected in England in 1945, was the invention of one who was an ardent opponent of nursery rhymes. Samuel Griswold Goodrich, and American born in 1793, and best known as the original 'Peter Parley', devoted thirty years to an endervour to reform children's literature. 

H wrote, on his own reckoning, some seventy volumes of truth and instruction, and in the thirties of the last century very nearly succeeded in banishing the nursery rhyme and fairy tale from the more expensive nurseries of both England and America. In 1846, incensed by the revival of the old lore as exemplified by Halliwell's researches and 'Felix Summerlay's Traditional Songs for the Nursery, he wrote a skit for Merry Museum. Nursery rhymes, he said, were nonsense. Anyone, even a child, could make one up. Listen!

Higglrty, pigglety, pop!

The dog has eaten the mop;

The pig's in a hurry,

The cats in a flurry-

Higgletyl, pigglety, pop!

And because, in spite of everything, he was a bit of a genius, Goodrich had unwittingly added to the store of nursery rhyme literature. The rhyme formed the basis for Maurice Sendak's story Higglety, Pigglety, Pop; there must be more to life (NY: Harper and Row, 1967.

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And this article by the Southern Literary Messenger is incredible for its 19thC writing style and for its content;

"There are some persons, and those too among graduates of colleges, who mourn over the change of books for youth—who lament the disgrace into which Mother Goose, Tom Thumb, and Jack the Giant Killer, have fallen. But this mental obliquity only shows, that there are persons, whose minds are so perverted by a false start in education, as never to have enjoyed the exercise of that good old-fashioned guide to truth—common sense. 

...

Mr. Goodrich was originally a bookseller, and from his position, his attention was directed to the defective character of books for children and youth. The works of this sort in circulation were, for the most part, reprints of English publications; and nearly the whole of them were designed for amusement, and consisted of antiquated and monstrous fictions. It is not a little curious, that while fiction was thus dealt out in this department of juvenile literature, truth and knowledge were generally presented to children in the dry and repulsive form of technical compends and catechisms.

....

He has shown that truth, upon which nature and philosophy alike teach us that the young intellect should be fed and fostered, may be rendered as palatable as matters of mere fancy. While it has been discovered, that the stomach of the infant need not be soothed with toddy and paregoric, he has made it apparent that the mind and heart need not be stimulated by fiction.

...

In illustration of the dramatic and descriptive talent displayed in these works, we will make an extract from Parley’s Tales about America:

“At length the morning came, and the chief of the tribe arrived, with several other Indians. He was an old man, but still strong and active. The Indians told him of my capture, and attempt to escape, and asked him what should be my fate. Having heard the story, he came near to me, and in a stern voice, he spoke as follows:

“White man, listen to me! Once the red man was king over these woods and waters. The mountains and rivers were then the red man’s, and then he was rich and happy.

“At length, the white men, thy fathers, came. The red men bade them welcome. But they were ungrateful and treacherous. When they grew strong, they drove the red men over the mountains, and took their lands—and I was still the white man’s friend.

“But see here,” said he, pointing to a scar on his breast, “this is the mark of a white man’s bullet. I had harmed him not—I had lived among the white men, and served them. But they shot at me as if I were a wild- cat.

“White man,” said he, “listen! I was once the white man’s friend—I am now his enemy. Think no more of escape. This hour you shall die.”

“Chief,” said I, “do as you like. If it is God’s will that I die, I shall die contented. My father was a friend to the red man, and his son has never harmed them.

“My father saved the life of a red man, and now you will kill his son. If it will make an Indian chief happy to spill the blood of one who saved a red man’s life, then kill me—I am ready to die.

“And my soul will go to the Great Spirit, and will say to Him, ‘My father was a benefactor to the red man, and they murdered his son!’ ”

“Speak,” said the Chief, “Where did your father live?”

“In Boston,” said I.

“And who was the Indian whose life he saved?”

“His name was Wampum,” I replied.

“White man,” said he, “look at me, I am Wampum! I know you. You were the boy who came to my wigwam at Holyoke. You were the boy who went with me to the Great Falls. It was your father who saved my life! And shall I suffer his son to die?

“Brethren,” said Wampum, speaking to the Indians, “I was a stranger in a distant city of the white men—I drank their fire-water, and it made me wild—

“I struck a sailor, and he was angry. He came upon me with twelve men. They beat me down, and trampled on me. They would have killed me, but a white man with a strong arm, beat them off. The friend of the red men saved my life. Here is his son—shall he die?”

The Indians answered by untying my hands and feet— “Go,” said Wampum, “go to your friends and tell them that the red men will not forget kindness.

“Tell them that we will repay to the children the good deeds of their fathers. We war only with the wicked; we seek only the blood of our enemies.”

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"I know that there is a certain music in them that delights the ear of childhood...but what I affirm is that many of these pieces are coarse, vulgar, offensive, and it is precisely these portions that are apt to stick to the minds of children."¹ "Do not children love truth?" he asks. "If so, is it necessary to feed them on fiction? Can not History, Natural History, Geography, and Biography, become the elements of juvenile works, in place of fairies and giants, and mere monsters of the imagination?"²

Quoted in The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature, Carpenter, Humphrey and Mari Prichard, but googled here.