Poetry from Daily Life: Learning from Humpty Dumpty, Jack and Jill

My guest this week on Poetry from Daily Life is Virginia Lowe, who lives in Melbourne, Australia. Dr. Lowe says she has always written, from editing newsletters and maintaining a monthly blog, to her favorite genre, writing poetry. Her husband, John, is a poet too. A favorite activity has been teaching a U3A (University of the Third Age) creative writing group. One unique fact about Virginia is that she studied her two children’s development and responses to books from infancy to early adolescence. Her research, including 5,500 pages of notes, became part of her studies for a Ph.D. ~ David L. Harrison

Nursery rhymes, the first poetry

"Uff uff me, or my hearts will break," cried daughter (D) when presented, at age 3, with her new baby brother (S). Already she was integrating nursery rhyme words with her own language. S used the same phrase at roughly the same age, begging Grandpa to read a specific rhyme. D: "I’m going to Jack and Jill him" of her sibling, fortunately sharing a bath. Did their deliberate overstatement imply a nascent understanding of irony? Real/pretend concepts also and beginning morals are in some rhymes. "Why did he say 'What a good boy am I'?" D asked me of Little Jack Horner, and then repeated to the baby in his high chair. "It’s just nonsense, Little Man" (S at 11 months).

S had shown recognition of a poster in a public mothers’ room in the city, where I had taken him to breastfeed at 3 months, waving his arms at Humpty Dumpty and vocalising to it. I immediately sang to him: "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again." There were always four or five nursery rhyme books at home — ours or the library’s. The children knew that the same words could be illustrated by different pictures. Much older, almost 5, S came running through the house and grabbed my hand, pulling me to his room: "Mummy Mummy there’s something wrong!" then when we arrived "It’s Humpty Dumpty!" pointing to the cover of a library book. Dressed in the tight fancy clothes of a Victorian gentleman was his ovoid friend, along with other familiar characters, simply sketched. There is no other book where the actual words are well known, but the artists’ illustrations are completely different (except a couple for older children, e.g. "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," where Sir John Tenniel's familiar drawings have been redrawn by many others. He recognized several very different Humptys, but thought that here his exotic garb made it worthy of comment. So they learned about versions, style, and interpretation, too.

Studying children’s literature I was aware that the critics and theorists underestimated young children. The children of the few parent-observers were read to from early on, though the actual published records didn’t begin until about age 2. I determined that I would keep a close record of mine, when I had them. Their father, a librarian, was all in favor and often helped with the reading and the hours it took in the evening to record it all, especially when both children were at home during the day.

Nursery rhymes are not as inevitable to child rearing as they have been for centuries but they still have a lot to offer infants and carers. First there is the interesting vocabulary, phrases not available in everyday conversation, then simple but memorable tunes, and the actions that traditionally go with some. Even syntax. S at 3: "He’s like King Cole ‘cos it said 'was he'" of the unfamiliar (Robin Hood) song on the radio.

But it’s not only the words and the tunes I want to discuss here. We expected books to be a comfort and an amusement as they always had been to us parents, part of our lives. For instance in a long car trip, when it wasn’t my turn to drive, I was keeping D entertained by singing all the nursery rhymes I could think of. She’d allow me to sing each rhyme three times in a row, but any more than three, or repeating one I’d already sung, were immediately stopped.

They understood about rhyme too, leading to a first joke from S at 2 years and 3 months. We had a book not of actual nursery rhymes, but very simple verses. I often stopped for them to fill in the rhyming word. He would have shouted "feet" many times to rhyme with "sweet," and as a realistic lamb is clear in the picture, but instead at 2 he shouted "wheels" to everyone’s surprise and delight.

Don’t wait. Start your baby on nursery rhymes today.

Virginia Lowe is an Australian poet. Her collection, one poem for each of her eighty years, is "The Myopic’s View" (Ginninderra Press). Her book on young children and books is "Stories, Pictures and Reality: Two Children Tell" (Routledge).