What NOT to say to a depressed person (encore!)

What Not to Say to a Depressed Person

“It’s all in your mind.”
“You just need to give yourself a good swift kick in the rear.”
“No one ever said life was fair.”
“I think you enjoy wallowing in it."
"Depression is a choice, you know."
“Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.”
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself.”
"There are a lot of people worse off than you.”
“But it’s a beautiful day!”
“You have so many things to be thankful for!”
“You just want attention.”
“Happiness is a choice, you know.”
"Just read this book. It'll fix you right up."
“Everything happens for a reason.”
“There is always somebody worse off than you are.”
“You should get off all those pills.”
“You are what you think you are.”
“Cheer up!”
“Have you been praying/reading your Bible?”
"People who meditate don't get depressed."
“You need to get out more.”
"Don't you have a sense of humour?"
“Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
“Get a job!”
“Smile and the world smiles with you, cry and you cry alone.”
"Just read this book. It'll fix you right up."
“But you don’t look depressed. You seem fine to me.”
“You can do anything you want if you just set your mind to it.”
“Snap out of it, will you? You have no reason to feel this way.”
“I wish I had the luxury of being depressed.”
“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”
"Just read this book. It'll fix you right up."
"Do you want your family to suffer along with you?"
“Can't you at least make an effort?"
“Believe me, I know exactly how you feel. I was depressed once for several days.”
“Turn it over to your Higher Power.”
“I think your depression is a way of punishing us.”
“So, you’re depressed. Aren’t you always?”
“You’re always so negative! Look on the bright side.”
“What you need is some real tragedy in your life to give you perspective.”
"You're a writer, aren't you? Just think of all the good material you're
getting out of this."
“Have you tried camomile tea?”
"I TOLD you to read that book."
"Go out and help someone who is worse off than you and you won't
have time to brood."
“You have to take up your bed and carry on.”
“Well, we all have our crosses to bear.”
"God never gives us more than we can handle."
"I was depressed until I tried yoga."
“You don’t like feeling that way? Change it!"
“SMILE!”

Most Godawful Cookbook of All Time?

 

I apologize in advance for the quality of the mages in this post - but this was the only form I could find these horrendous recipes in (lifted from a Facebook page which features Godawful cookbooks from the past 100 years or so).

This is the kind of thing women were told to do in the 1950s, and - as we too often forget - well into the '60s. To "keep your man" (i. e. not allow him to stray sexually), you had to satisfy "that other appetite" - an idea as old as Betty Crocker herself. Just the assumption that you "caught" him in the first place is insulting - implying trickery, false pregnancies, and all sorts of promises that are never kept. Treachery.

This freaking thing came out only FIVE YEARS BEFORE I GOT MARRIED. I have nothing to add to that.

💲💰ELIZABETH HOLMES: Shop NOW for cool Liz MERCH!💰💲

She may need the money. 

🍒RED JELL-O JIGGLE-JIGGLE!🍒

Something totally silly, for a totally silly day.

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK! A Major Victory for Piers Morgan

 

(I may be stretching copyright a bit here, but I wanted to copy and paste this piece from the Mail because it delighted me so! Chalk one up for Piers.)

PIERS MORGAN: Ofcom's vindication of me is a resounding victory for freedom of speech and a resounding defeat for Princess Pinocchios who think we should all be compelled to believe every fork-tongued word they say – now, do I get my GMB job back?

By Piers Morgan for MailOnline

'Everyone is in favour of free speech,' said Winston Churchill, 'but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.'

He could have been talking about Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle, two people who think they have both the right to drop endless incendiary unsubstantiated bombshells about their family AND the right to censor and silence anyone who dares to disbelieve or challenge them.

Back in March, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex spent two hours spray-gunning the Royals to Oprah Winfrey in an explosive interview on prime-time US television.

They claimed a member of the Royal Family had been racist about their son Archie, and that their little boy had been banned from being a Prince because of his skin colour.

Hours later on GMB, Piers said he didn't believe a word Meghan Markle said triggering furious protest from her fans of the couple. Today OFCOM announced that they had rejected all the complaints against Piers 

Meghan also claimed that she told several senior Palace officials she was feeling suicidal, but they told her she couldn't have any treatment because it would be bad for the royal brand.

Oh, and she stated as fact that she and Harry secretly got married three days before their official wedding, in a private ceremony conducted by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

On ITV's Good Morning Britain a few hours later, I said I didn't believe a word Meghan Markle said.

This triggered a furious protest from fans of the couple who accused me of being a racist callous misogynist who was belittling Meghan's 'lived experience' of mental health and racism.

But it was simpler than that: I just didn't believe her.

Not least because it was immediately established that some of her more outlandish claims, like the secret wedding and Archie's princely ban, were provable nonsense.

As the furore grew, a record number of 57,000 people, including Meghan Markle herself, complained about me to the UK TV government regulator OFCOM.

ITV's Chief Executive, Dame Carolyn McCall, responded by saying that she believed Meghan's mental health claims, and I was then told by my employers to either apologise for what I had said or leave the show with immediate effect.

I decided to leave.

As I explained in an article for the Mail on Sunday several weeks later: 'I wasn't going to apologise for disbelieving Meghan Markle, because the truth is that I don't believe Meghan Markle. And in a free democratic society, I should be allowed not to believe someone, and to say that I don't believe them. That, surely, is the very essence of freedom of speech? If I said I now believed Meghan, I would be lying to the audience, the very thing I've accused her of doing.'

Today, in a stunning verdict, OFCOM announced that they agreed with this argument, and rejected every single complaint against me.

Their report is lengthy and detailed, but in the end, it came down to an unequivocal and emphatic endorsement of my right to an opinion.

'OFCOM is clear that, consistent with freedom of expression, Mr Morgan was entitled to say he disbelieved the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's allegations and to hold and express strong views that rigorously challenged their account,' they declared, adding that their Broadcasting Code 'allows for individuals to express strongly held and robustly argued views, including those that are potentially harmful or highly offensive, and for broadcasters to include these in their programming.'

It concluded: 'The restriction of such views would, in our view, be an unwarranted and chilling restriction on freedom of expression both of the broadcaster and the audience.'

Chilling… wow.

Ironically, I would imagine that word will prompt a very chilly reaction from the self-satisfied Sussexes as they slurp kale smoothies in their California mansion over breakfast this morning.

Make no mistake, this is a watershed moment in the battle for free speech.

If OFCOM had found against me, that would have signalled the end of every UK TV journalist's right to express any honestly held opinion on air lest it upset the likes of Meghan Markle.

The whole point of journalism is surely to question and challenge statements from public figures, particularly when no actual evidence is produced to support them?

Five months on from my sudden departure from GMB, at least 17 of Meghan and Harry's claims in the Oprah interview have now been shown to be false or disingenuous.

 The whole point of journalism is surely to question and challenge statements from public figures, particularly when no actual evidence is produced to support them? writes Piers 

The poor old Archbishop of Canterbury was even forced to publicly deny he'd conducted a secret marriage ceremony because that would have been a criminal offence and he might have been sent to prison for it.

More pertinently, none of the couple's most sensational and damaging statements about racism and mental health have yet been supported by a shred of evidence amid furious denials from the Royal Family.

So, my observation that I didn't believe Meghan Markle is looking stronger by the day. And for the record, I still don't believe her.

But that's not really the point.

This is not about me, or Meghan Markle.

It's about free speech and the right to have an opinion.

We now live in a woke-ravaged era where it's become a punishable offence to say what you really think about almost anything for fear that someone, somewhere, will be offended.

This insidious 'cancel culture' as it's been termed represents the most serious threat to democracy in my lifetime.

People all over the world are being shamed, vilified, and even fired from their jobs for expressing an opinion that the woke brigade don't like.

Every day, social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook explode with self-righteous judgements handed down by the court of woke public opinion, and the consequence is that debate is being destroyed at the altar of political correctness in a way that would have Churchill turning in his grave.

This was a man who fought off the freedom-muzzling Nazis, for God's sake!

Yet now people calling themselves 'liberal' are behaving like the worst kind of fascists.

That's why this OFCOM ruling matters so much.

It was preposterous that I had to leave a job I loved because I didn't believe a demonstrable liar.

But it happened because the corporate world has been cowed into surrendering to the woke mob whenever it bays for blood.

I was reliably informed recently that Meghan Markle wrote directly to my ITV boss Dame Carolyn McCall the night before I was forced out, demanding my head on a plate.

Apparently, she stressed that she was writing to Dame Carolyn personally because they were both women and mothers – a nauseating playing of the gender and maternity card if ever there was one.

What has the world come to when a whiny fork-tongued actress can dictate who presents a morning television news programme?

So yes, I'm obviously delighted that OFCOM has supported my right to disbelieve the Sussexes' lurid claims against the Royal Family, many of which have failed to stand up to even a scintilla of basic scrutiny of the kind that a woefully enabling Oprah should have conducted.

This is a resounding victory for free speech and a resounding defeat for Princess Pinocchios.

As OFCOM determined, to have restricted my right to disbelieve her and Harry would have been 'chilling.'

And when Meghan and Harry, whose unofficially authorised biography is titled 'Finding Freedom', lick their failed censorship wounds today, I suggest they heed the words of George Orwell: 'If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.'

Just one question remains: does this mean I get my job back?  

🚗🚙🚔VROOM-VROOM! PORT COQUITLAM CAR SHOW 2021!🚔🚙🚗

UNSTOPPABLE! The Port Coqutlam Car Show 2021 would not be stopped by a little thing like being CANCELLED for the second year in a row. This year we had a monumental neighborhood drive-by in which happy spectators camped out to watch the show. Setting up at the lights is a good idea, because you get a sort of 360-degree view as they turn and ZOOM away. My husband complained some of them came around twice, but I wouldn't have minded seeing them in a continous loop. I have missed vintage car shows, which I have come to love in the past few years and which we haven't been able to attend since the you-know-what started (and let's just boycott that word from now on - it's a joy-killer if ever there was one). But joy knows no bounds at this vroom-vroom community event.

It's the SAM DICKER SHOW!

The things I find online, late late at night! I confess I "borrow" footage from some other channels, who in turn have "borrowed" the material from that well-known place, Elsewhere. This stuff gets passed around and passed around, probably kept in some vault in someone's basement until it is released - or, in this case, escapes. I am told Sam Dicker was really a genius in his field and a pioneer developer of early video games, and I have no doubt of that, but he DOES have a certain "Mom's basement" look about him, as if he has never had a girl friend and doesn't get out much.

BLOGGER'S AFTERTHOUGHT: I've figured it out! I realize just why this clip looks so damn creepy. Like Elizabeth Holmes, he doesn't blink. At all. The average person blinks something like twelve times a second (or minute, I forget - at least they DO blink once in a while). This guy's eyes seem glued open. 

🐷A Pig at the Opera (Pre-Code cartoon)

 

This slightly naughty pre-Code cartoon features a character jumping up and down on an operatic pig`s huge bosom, I wonder if this sort of animation was actually meant for children. Perhaps, like pre-Code Betty Boop and those military characters (Private SNAFU or whatever his name was), they were geared towards the adult audience eating their popcorn and waiting for the Gary Cooper movie to begin.

Tillie the Toiler Fashion Parade!

Though most people have never heard of her, Tillie the Toiler must have been the best-dressed comic strip character of all time. Created in the 1920s by Ray Westover, the strip lasted 30 years and traced Tillie's evolution from a brainless flapper to a sophisticated Lois-Lane-type working woman. But what was really unusual about Tillie was the way she dressed - or rather, WAS dressed. Quite literally, her followers designed her clothes for her. Fans were encouraged to send in sketches for the artists to develop into haute couture. If you look carefully at these images, you will see the names and addresses of the designers included with most of the ensembles. What a thrill it must have been to see your creation modelled on your favorite paper doll!

Harold Lloyd: Facebook profile pics

 

Back in the day, I used to really work at Facebook covers/profile pics (please do not ask me why), and I came out with a new one every week, if not every day. Some of them are pretty nice, and deserve a second go-'round.

Crazy Camay Soap Lady

 

The lady in this Camay soap commercial seems a little too ecstatic, somehow. . . 

😍"I'm in the Mood" (for WHAT??)🤩

Nothing like those old K-Tel ads to transport you to another level of reality. Then you can't wait to get back.

😳1938: A VERY GOOD YEAR FOR TELEVISION!😲

1938 WOULD have been a very good year for television, if it had existed. But in a sense, it did - if in a nearly-exclusively-one-sided way. Considering the resolution was something like 17 stripey-things, or whatever the technical term was, this is pretty good - at least, semi-recognizable as figures of humans, though that cartoon leaping out at the end scares the hell out of me. I don't think sound could be simultaneously broadcast until some time in the 1940s. It seems curious to me that the content seems vaguely child-oriented.

💥FEROCIOUSGUMBY UPDATE! Saying swears, Meghan Markle hair, keep cool, ge...

I don't appear in too many of my videos, but I literally wanted to see what my hair looks like now, and can't ever get a good view in a mirror because everything is backwards. I look completely different now - I won't say better or worse, though I feel ten years older sometimes. 

Why I HATE "mental health"

I hate buzzwords and fads, and they exist in every single area of human endeavour. The one I hear repeatedly now is "mental health". But what does it mean? Scratch a little deeper, and it usually refers to a celebrity or public figure "admitting" he or she experienced depression, but always in the deep past, at a safe distance.

Anxiety is big these days - it always has been - but it's just what folks get when things are this bad, hard-wired into our brain evolution. But what about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and - the big, bad boogeyman of "mental health" - PSYCHOSIS?

One day I tried to count the number of times I heard or read terms meaning "crazy", and I stopped after fifteen. It includes nut case, whack job, cracked, batshit crazy, psycho, and on and on (I don't even need to tell you, do I?), with facilities to house these undesirables called the nut house, the booby hatch, the funny farm, the whatever. 

Want to know what Merriam-Webster's dictionary has to say? I've copied and pasted all the synonyms, verbatim. Buckle in.

Insane

as in psychotic

having or showing a very abnormal or sick state of mind 

"only an insane person would intentionally jump off a skyscraper"

Synonyms & Similar Words

psychotic 

lunatic
mad
nuts
crazy
maniacal
maniac
mental
gaga
paranoid
crazed
psycho
paranoidal
deranged
looney
whacky
disturbed
demented
strange
irrational
unhinged
loony
whacko
nutty
unbalanced
cuckoo
wacko
screwy
eccentric
certifiable
wacky
ballistic
batty
bonkers
cracked
bedlam
daft
unreasonable
around the bend

haywire
kooky
foolish
odd
barmy
depressed
daffy
loony tunes
obsessed
crackbrained
bughouse
meshuga
out to lunch
moonstruck
loco
crackpot
unsound
scatty
non compos mentis
brainsick
kookie
hysteric
bats
meshuggah
frantic
looney tunes
distraught
meshugah
hysterical
distracted
schizophrenic
balmy
meshugge
delusional
fruity
off
wud
paranoic
neurotic
delirious
cranky
loopy
fey
sociopathic
schizoid
out of one's mind
off one's rocker
obsessive-compulsive
paranoiac
delusionary
off one's gourd
crackers
queer
disordered
off one's head
oddball

aberrant
tetched
out of one's head
nuclear
touched
dotty
berserk
witless
pixillated
pixilated
amuck
raving
senseless
monomaniacal
frenzied
potty
teched
ape
amok
wigged-out
monomaniac
fixated
bananas

These nasty epithets have INCREASED in the past couple of years, and I sense that public contempt for "crazies" has grown exponentially. At the same time, every day and in every way, we hear the term bandied about: mental health, mental health, mental health. I suspect there is considerable schadenfreude involved, in that people love to watch other people's crises. It's a great spectator sport. And it's almost (but not quite) a badge of honour now for a celebrity to take a little break from their multi-billion-dollar career to "work on their mental health".

But they don't know what they are talking about. 

These people who so delicately refer to "mental health" know nothing at all of the real deal, how it can be life-threatening, and how it can take every fibre of your being to put your life back together after an "episode". The confusion and the lurching moods, the endless trials on medications that seem to make matters worse - but this is only part of the story.

I don't know how many times I've been in psychiatric wards, because I don't remember those horrendous passages in my life very well, nor do I wish to. But there were no cards, no flowers, and most definitely, no visitors. Who would want to go in there? Or did they just assume someone in that state did not want or require visitors? The people around me just pretended it hadn't happened, or told people I was "away".

No doubt if I'd had my tonsils out, it would have been a different story. But it's obvious that something as horrendous as a  tonsillectomy would require sweet gifts and cards and visits, whereas that other thing - well - 

I remember sitting in a women's group in which we were encouraged to "share" some particularly vulnerable experiences in our lives. I made the huge mistake of saying I had recently been in the hospital, and as I talked, I noticed the woman sitting next to me was acting as if she had suddenly developed an all-over body rash. Then she said, "I'm sorry", got up from the chair and moved away from me. She apologized profusely, saying "I'm sorry, I just can't hear stories about the psycho ward." No one objected, and the group went on talking, though the temperature of the room had dipped slightly.

I've heard people blow off "psychos" with such utter contempt that I have been tempted to grab them by the collar and say, "Look into my eyes. You are talking about ME." Not only that, it might be YOUR closest, dearest loved one, or even YOURSELF who may be next to bear that label of utter disgrace and contempt. 

There is no disgrace in a condition which has been part of humanity forever, and which is poorly-understood at best, even by professionals. Why people are now pretending so hard to understand it, or at least pretend to be more compassionate about it, is beyond me. I guess it's better than nothing - but not much. Maybe it's just an updated version of "thoughts and prayers", 

I say fuck the genteel, sanitized label of "mental health", particularly to display how compassionate and enlightened you are, and instead STOP referring to whack jobs and nut bars and try to see human beings as human beings. Is that such a tall order?

AAAAAND, just for reference, here are the ANTONYMS of "insane" from the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

sane

reasonable

sound

balanced

rational

clear

normal

wise

sensible

lucid

uncrazy

judicious

compos mentis

healthy

well-adjusted

unneurotic

Doesn't quite match up. Does it?

POST-BLOG THOUGHTS. I wrote this post several years ago, and if anything, it's even more true now. I believe you can still order "mental patient costumes" online for Halloween, and in my very own neighborhood, I've seen lawn decorations that said things like "DANGER! ESCAPED MENTAL PATIENT" (or looney or whack job or whatever the epithet of the day is). "The Mentally Ill" (a separate species, apparently) are still the stuff of horror, violence, and dread. The more extreme depictions in pop culture are virtually indistinguishable from that other favorite cultural icon, the zombie.

That means I'd better join the club, or grab a club or something, and start stalking the neighborhood. But I will ONLY pursue people who spew the meaningless term "mental health" left, right and centre - because everyone else is saying it now. It's just the thing to say.

The Troll Doll Channel: GRIM REAPER and COOL SKATER!

These two represent the alpha and omega of trollhood. As Bob Dylan puts it: "I sleep with life and death in the same bed." 

🤡CARNIVAL FROM HELL😲 (badly-damaged film)

This was one of the worst-damaged pieces of film I've ever seen. How I love the sparkling surrealism, the sense of bombs going off every few seconds, with a glimpse of "normalcy" in the background. Kind of reminds me of these times. 

🌞GOOSE ON THE LOOSE: Canada Geese TRAMPLE Goose Barrier!🌞

Geese don't read signs very well. Or maybe they read them TOO well, and just ignore what they say.

Take a gander (or take a goose!)

I don't know why I've had this rather inane nursery rhyme repeating in my head lately. I don't know how it got started. I'm aware that most of these childish things have dark or even sinister origins, buried in antiquity somewhere.

I wondered if this one wasn't just a piece of nonsense, incongruous, like the wacky poems of Edward Lear or even Lewis Carroll. But no. The merest probing into Wikipedia brought up this:

Most historians believe that this rhyme refers to priest holes—hiding places for itinerant Catholic priests during the persecutions under King Henry VIII and later under Oliver Cromwell. Once discovered the priest would be forcibly taken from the house ('thrown down the stairs') and treated badly. Amateur historian Chris Roberts suggests further that the rhyme is linked to the propaganda campaign against the Catholic Church during the reign of Henry VIII.

Other interpretations exist. Mark Cocker and Richard Mabey note in Birds Britannica that the greylag goose has for millennia been associated with fertility, that "goose" still has a sexual meaning in British culture, and that the nursery rhyme preserves these sexual overtones ("In my lady's chamber").

Priest holes! Sexual connotations! It doesn't quite hang together for me, but these things can evolve over time, or exist in layers. The original version didn't even have the throwing-down-the-stairs bit:

Goose-a goose-a gander,
Where shall I wander?
Up stairs and down stairs,
In my lady's chamber;
There you'll find a cup of sack
And a race of ginger.

We won't even ask what a "race of ginger" is. It's just one of these obscure things. Some older versions include these even-sillier lines:

The stairs went crack,
He nearly broke his back.
And all the little ducks went,
'Quack, quack, quack'.

All that strange left-leg stuff ("so I took him by his left leg and threw him down the stairs") didn't seem to add up for me, until I suddenly remembered hearing the expression, "He kicks with his left foot." Just recalling that phrase jarred awake a synapse that hadn't fired since I was six and listening to my Grandmother quietly, politely eviscerate every Catholic in the neighborhood. The left foot is like the left leg or the left hand - sinister, half a bubble off plumb, "not the thing". In other words, to an observant Protestant - Catholic.

You have to ask yourself, however, why anyone would invent a children's rhyme about priest holes and the persecution of Catholics, those nasty old left-foot-kickers. Why would anyone throw in references to geese (ladies of the night) and ladies' chambers (implying high-status quarters not normally open to the goose trade)? There is Mother Goose, of course, just to complicate things. But if you really look at the structure of the rhyme, which absolutely no one does, you see that it can be interpreted entirely another way.

The narrator, the "I" who is reciting the rhyme, is actually addressing it to the goose character - asking it, in essence, "where should I go? It's kind of like "hey, you over there - yes, I mean YOU, Goosey Goosey Gander - what's a-happenin'?" But it's definitely not "Here I am, Goosey Goosey Gander, Esquire, and let me tell you all about my lady's chamber." This is in spite of the fact that every illustration I've ever seen for this thing includes a big, nasty goose, usually throwing a man down the stairs.

In fact, "Goosey Goosey Gander" might just be a collection of nonsense syllables, a blithery-blathery-tra-la-lee sort of thing.

If you take the goose right out of the equation (and that's no fun, because I love these depictions of savage geese throwing terrified men down the stairs), then you have something like this:

Dinder, dander, donder
Whither shall I wander?
Upstairs, downstairs,
In my lady's chamber.

When you look at it this way, it can and does have erotic possibilities. Hmmm, let's see, where am I going to wander? (wandering being a sort of aimless idling, or even a poking-around-in-none-of-your-business thing). Maybe up here, maybe down there (whew - now that has some sexual meaning behind it!), or maybe in my lady's chamber, where I certainly do NOT belong. It has a sort of subtext of invaded intimacy.

The old man who wouldn't say his prayers kind of reminds me of the old rhyme about "I met a man who wasn't there". In any case, is it really the goose who does the "throwing down the stairs" bit? Of course not; it's the narrator of the poem. So maybe it's really by that notorious old Catholic-hater, Henry VIII. Who knows, he wrote a lot of songs, such as Greensleeves. Or maybe Anne Boleyn wrote it for something to do in the Tower before she got chopped.

Tell Tale Tit (your tongue shall be slit)

This was one of those accidental finds. For some reason a line from a nursery rhyme popped into my head - no, wait, it was something I read on Facebook about an author who wrote about nursery rhymes! Then I remembered an odd little Mother Goose book I had as a kid, with a bizarre rhyme in it about "chop-a-nose day". I remember my brother and I making terrible fun of it, but no one else believed such a rhyme even existed. Then. . .

This is the grand day of the Internet, that most splendid of times, when information is forever tickling your fingertips. All you have to do is grab. I'm still finding out what "chop-a-nose day" is, and I suspect it's a corruption or mispronunciation of something else. Until then. . . these are excerpts from the Gutenberg version (so it's OK to reproduce them) of a gorgeous little book by Kate Greenaway, who is responsible for these exquisite drawings. They would appear to be from the Edwardian era. 

I have excluded Little Miss Muffet, Humpty Dumpty, Jack and Jill, and all the others we already know about, leaving only the oddball ones. Many of them refer to social status in some way (not unlike the pop songs I wrote about recently), with beggars and kings appearing in the same verse. The rhythms here are irresistible, and if they haven't already been set to music, music just bursts out of them. One can hear these as skipping rhymes, or hopscotching, or perhaps even clapping. "The cat ran up the plum tree" is obviously meant to be chanted while bouncing a fat baby on your knee.

And how far back do these go? No doubt, like folk songs, they evolved over centuries. Ring Around a Rosy, which I didn't include here, is apparently medieval and was originally a chant to ward off the plague.

Hark! hark! the dogs bark,

The beggars are coming to town;

Some in rags and some in tags,

And some in a silken gown.

Some gave them white bread,

And some gave them brown,

And some gave them a good horse-whip, 

And sent them out of the town.

Diddlty, diddlty, dumpty,

The cat ran up the plum tree,

Give her a plum, and down she’ll come,

Diddlty, diddlty, dumpty.

We’re all jolly boys, and we're coming with a noise,

Our stockings shall be made

Of the finest silk,

And our tails shall trail the ground.

Elsie Marley has grown so fine,

She won’t get up to serve the swine;

But lies in bed till eight or nine,

And surely she does take her time.

There was a little boy and a little girl

Lived in an alley;

Says the little boy to the little girl,

“Shall I, oh, shall I?”

Says the little girl to the little boy,

“What shall we do?” 

Says the little boy to the little girl, 

“I will kiss you!”

 

Tell Tale Tit,

Your tongue shall be slit;

And all the dogs in the town

Shall have a little bit.

A dillar, a dollar,

A ten o’clock scholar;

What makes you come so soon?

You used to come at ten o’clock, 

But now you come at noon!

Rock-a-bye baby,

Thy cradle is green;

Father’s a nobleman,

Mother’s a queen.

And Betty’s a lady,

And wears a gold ring;

And Johnny’s a drummer,

And drums for the king.

See-Saw-Jack in the hedge,

Which is the way to London Bridge?

Little lad, little lad,

Where wast thou born?

Far off in Lancashire,

Under a thorn;

Where they sup sour milk

From a ram’s horn.

As I was going up Pippin Hill,

Pippin Hill was dirty;

There I met a sweet pretty lass,

And she dropped me a curtsey.

My mother, and your mother,

Went over the way;

Said my mother, to your mother,

“It’s chop-a-nose day.”

NEWS FLASH: yes, I did find some information about chop-a-nose day. According to the rhyme below, it's a sort of game you play wherein you pretend to chop off a child's nose.

Come to think of it, though we never called it chop-nose or chop-a-nose, my Dad used to pretend to pull off my nose, then stick his thumb through his fingers and say, "I've got your nose." Very funny.

Margery Mutton-Pie and Johnny Bo-Peep

Margery Mutton-pie and Johnny Bopeep,
They met together in Gracechurch-Street;
In and out, in and out, over the way,
Oh! says Johnny, 'tis chop-nose day.

This rhyme is very similar to My Mother and Your Mother, and I believe you play it the same way:

You play it with a child by reciting the rhyme while gently sliding your hand down his/her face. When you get to the last line, you hold the child's nose between your thumb and forefinger, with your other hand you pretend to "chop off" the nose! 

Below is a link to a long scholarly article about the socio-political significance of nose amputation. It just goes on and on. Not surprisingly, it was a particularly painful and vicious, not to mention humiliating punishment for various infractions, including adultery. It would be hard to hide the horrible wound from the world without going about constantly veiled, or not going about at all. I won't dwell on all this, because I can't, but I do wonder if this harmless child's game is an echo of something really horrendous. Well, we still have Ring Around a Rosy, its origins shrouded in the time of the Black Death, with thousands of bodies stacked up and ready to be burned or buried in mass graves. So could chop-a-nose day be a lot more literal than it first appears?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2689568/