Many nursery rhymes derive from heinous events, social injustices, and extreme poverty throughout history, of which public objection to those conditions was often punishable by death before the crown. It was with song and rhyme, satire and laughter, that people delivered their experiences in secret nonsensical codes while enduring the hardships of life.

In the early twentieth century the ‘British Society for Nursery Rhyme Reform’ wanted to sanitize nursery rhyme content, a suggestion which psychoanalysis strongly criticized on account of it weakening the symbolic catharsis to children and adults affected by violence and adversity.

Nursery rhymes are somewhat like chants, a different form of communication, and can be another tool for healing and heeding the pitfalls and atrocities of our present day world.