Children's Songs

Barney really didn't help preserve the songs of our childhood.  My daughter got this Barney piano book from our friends and I was shocked at what I found.  Not only does the book require 3 hearing aid batteries ($5 a pop), but that purple marshmallow gave a rather PC wash to most of the songs that I knew from my childhood.  One of them:  Ring a Round the Rosie.

The real version:
Ring a round the rosie
Pocket full of posies
Ashes, ashes
We all fall down.

Yeah, it's grim.  It's supposed to have been a comfort song for children during the years of the Black Plague in Europe.  It's supposed to be grim.

Barney's version:
Ring a round the rosie
Pocket full of posies
Atishoo, atishoo
We all fall down!

So...now it's a song about allergies, I guess.

And then there's To Market (I'm sure you all remember the song from the original Miracle on 34th Street):

To market, to market
To buy a fat pig
Home again, home again
Jigga ji jig

Barney:
To market, to market
To buy a plum cake
Home again, home again
Market is late


What???

It's completely different!

And then there's the reversal of the Ants Go Marching.  It's supposed to be a count down starting with 10 by 10; with every verse, "The Little One Stops" to do something...that would be, wait- subtracting one from the total number...wow, so starting with 10x10, it would be 9x9!

Math is so amazing!

I honestly never watched Barney, so I don't know how many other songs he "altered".  I wasn't exactly in the age bracket during his broadcasts, but, like everyone else, I was VERY AWARE of how much that purple marshmallow and friends loved us.

I'm wondering what he would have done with "London Bridge"...it's supposed to fall down, afterall....