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Statement Of Purpose
As humans, a small part of us is attracted to anything macabre or sinister. A trope writers often like to abuse and use in their favor is "Subverted innocence", where Things associated with innocence, purity, happiness, and joy are frequently warped and twisted into something more sinister, either for humor, drama, or horror. This trope is not something new or recent, writers have been doing this since centuries in books, novels, plays and even nursery rhymes.
This project is to put light on the grim historical events or dark meanings and origins of cute and innocent nursery rhymes, how the dark events got turned into children's poetry and how the two are related.
Sketching and Ideation
Explanation
Baa Baa Black Sheep
complaining about King Edward’s wool tax, which gave a third of the cost to the King (“the Master”), a third to the church (“the Dame”), and the rest to the farmer, who could barely cover his expenses (the original version said “but none for the little boy who cries in the lane”).
Ring-around the rosie
The tale is based on the black plague. The rosies referring to the rashes, posies were the flowers kept in pockets to avoid the disease, ashes were everywhere due to the mass burning of the bodies and we all fall down as they all fell to their death.
London Bridge
There is a theory that comes from an old belief that a bridge would collapse without a human sacrifice buried within its foundation. So the “man to watch all night” is actually the spirit of the dead human watching over the bridge
Three Blind Mice
This tale is about Queen Mary I, who got the nickname “Bloody Mary” because she burned scores of Protestants at the stake. The three blind mice in this story are supposedly the Oxford Martyrs, three Anglican bishops who refused to renounce their Protestant beliefs, and were executed by Mary for “blindly” following Protestant learnings rather than Catholic ones.
Final Illustrations
Ring-around the rosie
Three Blind Mice
Baa Baa Black Sheep
London Bridge
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