Three blind mice

[Homicidalheathen]

Three Blind Mice

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

Not to be confused with Three Blind Mice and Other Stories.

This article is about the children's nursery rhyme. For the Three Blind Mice in Dr. No, see List of James Bond henchmen in Dr. No.

Three Blind Mice is a children's nursery rhyme and musical round.

The modern words are:

Three blind mice. Three blind mice.

See how they run. See how they run.

They all ran after the farmer's wife

She cut off their tails with a carving knife.

Did you ever see such a thing in your life

As three blind mice.

The first publication of this rhyme was written by Thomas Ravenscroft in 1609. The lyrics there are:

Three Blinde Mice,

three Blinde Mice,

Dame Iulian,

Dame Iulian,

The Miller and his merry olde Wife,

shee scrapte her tripe licke thou the knife.

There is an urban legend that this musical round was written earlier and refers to Queen Mary I of England executing three Protestant bishops. The earliest lyrics don't talk about directly killing the three blind mice and are dated after Queen Mary died, however, "she scrapte her tripe licke thou the knife" implies they were prepared and consumed if not a reference to tasting the blood of a slain adversary. (she scraped off the entrails and the knife was licked).

There is a narrative ambiguity at the heart of the rhyme, which is the question over whether the mice are chasing the farmer's wife after she cut their tails off, or whether she cut their tails off after they began chasing her.

In several sports (basketball and hockey, for example, which have three referrees), "Three Blind Mice" is used as a derogatory phrase for poor referees. Bands also play the song to mock referees in similar cases. Such references, however, are heavily frowned upon officially by both sports as unsportsmanlike.[1][2][3]

Before major-league baseball required four umpires at every game, there were regularly three. The Brooklyn Dodgers had a fan band called the "Sym-Phoney Band," led by Shorty Laurice, which started playing "Three Blind Mice" when the umpires came out onto the field until the league office ordered the team to stop it.

Joseph Holbrooke (1878-1958) composed his Symphonic Variations, opus 37, based on Three Blind Mice. Also, Joseph Haydn used its theme in the Finale (4th Mvt) of his Symphony 83 (La Poule) (1785-86); one of the 6 Paris Symphonies, and the music also appears in the final movement of English composer Eric Coates' suite The Three Men. "Three Blind Mice" was also used as a theme song for The Three Stooges and a Curtis Fuller arrangement of the rhyme is featured on the Art Blakey live album of the same name. 10cc's "I'm Not in Love" has Three Blind Mice playing in the end.

In the 1977 song "Sir Nose D'Voidoffunk" by Parliament, these lyrics are repeated several times:

"Three blind mice See how they run They all ran after the farmer's wife Turned on the fun with the water pipe Have you ever seen such a sight in your life? Those three blind mice Those blind three mice

The Beatles used the sentence "See how they run" in two of its songs, "I am the Walrus" and "Lady Madonna".

The Three Blind Mice are featured in the Shrek movies as friends of Shrek.

The Blood Ties episode "5:55" features someone whistling the tune of "Three Blind Mice" repeatedly.

A cover version was heard on the James Bond film Dr. No, his first film. The lyrics were:

Three blind mice in their room.

Three blind mice, there they go.

Marching down the streets in goodbye.

To a calypso beat all the while.

They're looking for the cat,

The cat that swallowed the rat.

They want to show that cat the attitude of three blind mice.

[Homicidalheathen]

http://www.rhymes.org.uk/three_blind_mice.htm

[Homicidalheathen]

Holy shit!

Mary Mary Quite Contrary: origin

Nursery Rhyme Origins & History

The origins are steeped in history... Bloody Mary!

The Mary alluded to in this traditional English nursery rhyme is reputed to be Mary Tudor, or Bloody Mary, who was the daughter of King Henry VIII. Queen Mary was a staunch Catholic and the garden referred to is an allusion to graveyards which were increasing in size with those who dared to continue to adhere to the Protestant faith - Protestant martyrs.

Instruments of Torture!

The silver bells and cockle shells referred to in the Nursery Rhyme were colloquialisms for instruments of torture. The 'silver bells' were thumbscrews which crushed the thumb between two hard surfaces by the tightening of a screw. The 'cockleshells' were believed to be instruments of torture which were attached to the genitals!

The " Maids" or Maiden was the original guillotine!

The 'maids' were a device to behead people called the Maiden. Beheading a victim was fraught with problems. It could take up to 11 blows to actually sever the head, the victim often resisted and had to be chased around the scaffold. Margaret Pole (1473 - 1541), Countess of Salisbury did not go willingly to her death and had to be chased and hacked at by the Executioner. These problems led to the invention of a mechanical instrument (now known as the guillotine) called the Maiden - shortened to Maids in the Mary Mary Nursery Rhyme. The Maiden had long been in use in England before Lord Morton, regent of Scotland during the minority of James VI, had a copy constructed from the Maiden which had been used in Halifax in Yorkshire. Ironically, Lord Morton fell from favour and was the first to experience the Maiden in Scotland!

Executions!

Another form of execution during Mary's reign was being burnt at the stake - a terrible punishment much used during the Spanish Inquisition. The English hated the Spanish and dreaded the idea of an English Inquisition. The executions during the reign of Bloody Mary were therefore viewed with a greater fear of the Spanish than the executions themselves - it is interesting to note that executions during her reign totalled less than 300 an insignificant amount compared to the executions ordered by her father King Henry VIII which are believed to have numbered tens of thousands! We recommend the following site for more facts and information about Bloody Mary

Mary Mary Quite Contrary: Origins and History

Mary Mary quite contrary,

How does your garden grow?

With silver bells and cockle shells

And pretty maids all in a row.

This imaginative drawing was created by the talented Scottish artist Shona Penny and used with her kind permission. It was inspired by the origins of the 'Mary, Mary Quite Contrary' Nursery Rhyme and has been submitted to the Bifrost fantasy project.

Mary Mary Quite Contrary: Origins and History

http://www.the-tudors.org.uk/bloody-mary.htm

Or unholy crap...preordained by god? Yah...right....

[MissKitty]

So interesting. Were you bored, or are you generally interested in this kind of thing?

[Homicidalheathen]

I thought about the grotesque nursery ryme and find out its not about mice at all really...