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History of Nursery Rhymes
Humpty Dumpty: King Richard's fall made him Humpty Dumpty.
Originally the last line was "Could not set Humpty up again"
- which can be interpreted as either putting him back on his
horse, or back on the throne.
Old King Cole: There was actually a King Cole in Britain
during the third century. No one knows much about him, but
historians agree that he's the subject of the poem.
Jack be nimble: For centuries, jumping over a candlestick
was a method of fortune-telling in England. According to The
Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes: "A candlestick with a
lighted candle was placed on the floor and if, when jumping
over it, the light was not extinguished, good luck was
supposed to follow during the coming year."
Ring around the rosy: According to James Leasor in The
Plague and the Fire, this "had its origins in the London
Plague of 1664. Rosy refers to the rosy rash of plague...The
posies were herbs and spices carried to ward off the disease;
sneezing was a common symptom of those close to death. In
the Annotated Mother Goose, the authors note that the third
line is often given as a sneezing noise ("At-choo, at-choo" 
and that "'We all fall down' was, in a way, exactly what
happened.
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