which is how traitors were displayed on London Bridge after they were hanged, drawn and quartered. The arms and legs were sent to the 4 quarters of the kingdom and I suppose the disemboweled torso was just dumped in a hole.
He also got "Ring around the Rosie" wrong. They didn't have tissues, they blew their noses by pinching one side of the nose and blowing out, aiming at the street. It's "Ashes, ashes (symbol of death), we all fall down!"
He also missed another creepy one, Humpty Dumpty. It wasn't a gigantic egg, it was a gigantic cannon perched on one of the walls of Colchester during the English Civil War. When cannon fire from the Parliamentary forces damaged the wall it sat on, it fell and cracked. The "all the king's horses and all the king's men" refer to the fact that it was a Royalist weapon and was broken beyond repair. Without that super weapon defending it, Colchester soon fell.
Most nursery rhymes have creepy origins. Kids are the most macabre among us, appropriate considering their enormous death rate before vaccines, fluid replacement during diarrhea, and other advances.
My own favorite book when I was a little kid was "Slovenly Peter." It's online and it's horrible. I loved it.
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