Thanks everyone, I know I have asked an impossible question, I was pondering really.
My grandmother would have been 132 also, so she would have learnt them from her mother/grandmother too.
I hadn't realised that Baa Baa black sheep was about wool tax? But it makes sense. I always thought that it was a sharing out of bags of wool, first come first served kind of thing for who gets the prized black wool?
As for their origins, and I do think some were creepy too.
I wonder if many were passed down as verbal warnings, re Cradle in tree tops and Poseys causing sneezing (or the it's about keeping the plague away, as I was once told)
Georgey Porgey could have been about warning girls about boys advances? (he kissed them and made them cry)
Polly Flinders (not to sit too near the fire?)
Now, what were they thinking about Sing a song of sixpence? To make sure the birds were dead before cooking in a pie?
3 blind mice , was that from the rime when killing/cutting off the tail would get you 3d or 6d from the rat catching department of the local council?
Jack Spratt, could that be waste not, want not?
