So, I was watching Jeopardy and the answer was "this was the number of birds baked into a pie and placed before the king... what a dainty dish indeed!"... or something as weird. The answer, of course, was "4 and 20".
This got me thinking about the absurdity of this nursery rhyme. Seriously...
Sing a song of Sixpence
Pocket full of rye
4 and 20 Blackbirds
Baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened
The Birds began to sing
Now wasn't that a dainty dish to set before the king.
Dumb. That is not at all a realistic portrayal of how this story would have gone down. And, maybe its to keep the harsh realities of the world from our children, but i think that makes kids weak and, frankly, dumb. If I had a kid who knew this rhyme, and i came home and found him or her baking birds into a pie and expecting to present it to some king I would be ticked, but not at the kid... at society for this rediculous rhyme.
That is why I will be teaching my kids more realistic versions of nursery rhymes. Take this for example... a much more accurate telling of how that story probably would happen:
"Someone was in the kitchen
Dunk on Rye
When 4 and 20 blackbirds
got baked in a pie
when the pie was opened
those burned birds began to scream
luckily the drunken one
happened to be the Queen."
No kid is EVER going to try to reenact this rhyme... and if he or she does, you know you have a sociopath, and you don't even need to pay a doctor to get the diagnosis.
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