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Saturday, June 11, 2016

Eerie Nursery Rhymes

Greetings, dearest Toads! Welcome to another Sunday Mini-Challenge. Grab your muse and let’s explore uncanny poetry… with youngsters in it. Children can be delightfully creepy. The same can be said of some of the lullabies we sing to them, and of many of the nursery rhymes they like to sing amongst themselves. Remember the cute:

Ring-a-round the rosie,
A pocket full of posies,
Ashes! Ashes!
We all fall down.

What’s sweeter than a rosie and a bunch of posies in spring? Very few things, I’m sure. But that double shot of ashes is just eerie. One of my favorites—and a much (much!) darker bone chiller—appears in Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle:

“Merricat, said Constance, would you like a cup of tea?
Oh no, said Merricat, you’ll poison me.
Merricat, said Constance, would you like me to go to sleep?
Down in the boneyard ten feet deep!”

Both the motif and tone of these lines make me blink a few extra times. For today’s challenge, I’m looking for seemingly sweet lullaby-like poems, which ooze this sort of creepiness. Craft them fun, write them dark, make my inner-giggling-child want to run far, far, far.
  
 Detail from the cover of We Have Always Lived in the Castle

 Please, feed Mr. Linky (below) with the direct link to your poem.
Visit other Toads. Their poems want to sing to you, really. 

20 comments:

  1. I'm quite excited to see what everybody is going to brew. :-)

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  2. Damon you woman, you made me rhyme again!

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  3. GREAT challenge! In case you didn't know, the aroma of flowers was said to ward of "miasma", thought to transmit the plague via bad air. Not enough people were alive and healthy to dig graves during the Black Death, so bodies were burned. Hence, ashes, ashes. DEE-lightful!

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  4. @Rommy, just wait until you have to endure my rhyming, lol!

    @Hannah, Yay!

    @Fireblossom, They still do it in some parts of the world--flowers and incense. Have you read Dancing on the Grave, by Niel Barley? There is a lot of fascinating things about flowers and funerals in that book, some of them are quite... uncanny.

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  5. Wonderful prompt, Magaly, as only your delightfully creepy own self could do--I will see what happens, though of late, writing seems more like a distant memory.

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  6. I don't get dark easily so here's a couple of tries.

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  7. The eerie came easy... but the seemingly sweet was harder... But there are some sick flowers here at least.

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  8. @Hedgewitch, I know whatever you come up with is going to be darkly yummy. I just know.

    @Debi, I think you did more than well. I loved it!

    @Bjorn, You and I seem to have gone the same way. Maybe our sweetness levels were on low today. :-D

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  9. Fascinating – you say 'ashes'? Here , that line is, 'Atishoo! Atishoo!'

    Busy busy, but I'll see what I can come up with.

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  10. Sorry I had to do a second this was just too fun.

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  11. Oh this prompt has been so much fun to read all the responses to. I'm not sure I'll get to writing poetry today but I've enjoyed nonetheless. And it makes me want to go get out all my old fairytales and Victorian kid lit from college!:-) Delicious.

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  12. @Rosemary, I was looking around and noticed that there are a lot of versions. Now my curiosity is completely involved, so I might have to do a bit of research to see what else is out there. A nursery rhyme that includes bits from funeral rites must have a very deep history.

    @Kerry, I've really enjoyed every bit.

    @Bjorn, Don't you ever apologize for extra yumminess!

    @Stacie, I'm so glad you've enjoyed the entries. I've been all giggles and startled eyes since the prompt went live. I hope you choose to delight in your old fairy tales and Victorian children's literature (I swear, the latter contains some of the creepiest and yummiest nursery rhymes out there).

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  13. Fireblossom-Very interesting I didn't know that!

    I got to this late on Sunday but what fun! I have been very busy recently playing catch up, I will get to reading I can't wait.

    I love to write about any subject dark or light and love a reason to rhyme. I have always thought of sleeping as a small death every night so this was perfect for my take. I can see why some would write more than once if only I had the time.

    Have a good week everyone! Hugs! Bekkie

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  14. Ironically, I hadn't even read comments about the plague until now and I used a plague mask photo as my image for my poem and although I didn't mention the word plague I was thinking about the plague of hate that sadly took lives this weekend.

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  15. @Bekkie, I think you nailed that feeling.

    @Susie, A plague indeed. I wonder when we'll be able to stop it from continuing to spread...

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  16. Its Monday yet i only just got, so thats how im serving it up; LATE
    Have a good week toads. Thanks for a lovely ehh EERie prompt Magaly

    much love...

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  17. Ok -- I wrote one! Very surprised that that happened. And grateful. :-) Thanks Magaly!

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  18. @Gillena, Yummy poetry is never late. Especially when it has graveyards in it. ;-)

    @Stacy, Off to see what you've concocted for us! ♥

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