| General Fiction posted May 7, 2024 |
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Demented Mind Story #9
Fiddlin' with Riddles
by Tom Horonzy
Fiddlin' with Riddles
Having the need to keep my mind active, I not only write inane stories on FanStory to keep from going insane but also play Words with Friends and do trivia puzzles such as Brain Candy.
This week's offering was a quiz regarding children's riddles that were common in my day of toddling that raised many questions for a doddering older tottering man, like the story of Jack and Jill. Why did they go up the hill without planning ahead by taking precautionary steps in case of missteps? What were they? A pair of three-year-olds?
As for the old lady who lived in a shoe, my first thought when rereading the rhyme was to ponder whether she was Catholic and uninclined to participate in timing her cycles. If she had, the shoe she used for a home might have had sufficient room, leaving her less confused, thereby providing answers as to what to do.
Then, I mused about Peter Piper. How did he come to pick a peck of pickled peppers when peppers would not have been pickled until after they had been picked? Another fact that came to me to that question made by my enquiring mind was that Peter Piper may have been a reference to a Mauritian government official called Peter Poivre, who examined Seychelles’s potential for cultivating spices. (Scheyschelle is an island north-north-east of Madagascar)
But who was it that wrote the tongue twister that was first published in John Harris’s Peter Piper’s Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation in 1813, thus making it one of the oldest tongue twisters known to us?
Moving on, what made Mary the Contrarian she turned out to be, and who was she? A little research provided me with Mary, being "Bloody Mary" Tudor, the first daughter of King Henry the Eighth. She later became England’s Queen Mary, a monarch, not the ship.
Other nursery rhymes had me ask why Peter, unrelated to the Pipers, had a fetish for eating pumpkins. Did he ever consider planting other fruits, such as squash, cucumbers, and zucchini? A balanced diet would have likely helped with the reports of his need for Pepto Bismol.
And was the character in "Hey, Diddle Diddle" named Diddle Diddle? How original. And the boy named Sue thought he had it rough. Further, did the cow and the dog have names, and were they as repetitive as Diddling Diddle's? It is also bizarre that the author thought a spoon would run away with a dish instead of a fork, and if I had been a dish, I would have selected a saucer as my partner.
Also, did you know London Bridge is constructed of quatrains in trochaic tetrameter catalectic, a most common form that relies on a double repetition rather than a rhyming scheme, frequently employed in children's rhymes and stories? I didn't. I simply thought the rhyme was entertaining as a three-year-old.
In closing this essay from this demented mind of mine, it would be nice to attract a larger following to coalesce with such ravings as I feel assured there are others that Rave grammatically, as well as at dance parties.
Fiddlin' with Riddles
Having the need to keep my mind active, I not only write inane stories on FanStory to keep from going insane but also play Words with Friends and do trivia puzzles such as Brain Candy.
This week's offering was a quiz regarding children's riddles that were common in my day of toddling that raised many questions for a doddering older tottering man, like the story of Jack and Jill. Why did they go up the hill without planning ahead by taking precautionary steps in case of missteps? What were they? A pair of three-year-olds?
As for the old lady who lived in a shoe, my first thought when rereading the rhyme was to ponder whether she was Catholic and uninclined to participate in timing her cycles. If she had, the shoe she used for a home might have had sufficient room, leaving her less confused, thereby providing answers as to what to do.
Then, I mused about Peter Piper. How did he come to pick a peck of pickled peppers when peppers would not have been pickled until after they had been picked? Another fact that came to me to that question made by my enquiring mind was that Peter Piper may have been a reference to a Mauritian government official called Peter Poivre, who examined Seychelles’s potential for cultivating spices. (Scheyschelle is an island north-north-east of Madagascar)
But who was it that wrote the tongue twister that was first published in John Harris’s Peter Piper’s Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation in 1813, thus making it one of the oldest tongue twisters known to us?
Moving on, what made Mary the Contrarian she turned out to be, and who was she? A little research provided me with Mary, being "Bloody Mary" Tudor, the first daughter of King Henry the Eighth. She later became England’s Queen Mary, a monarch, not the ship.
Other nursery rhymes had me ask why Peter, unrelated to the Pipers, had a fetish for eating pumpkins. Did he ever consider planting other fruits, such as squash, cucumbers, and zucchini? A balanced diet would have likely helped with the reports of his need for Pepto Bismol.
And was the character in "Hey, Diddle Diddle" named Diddle Diddle? How original. And the boy named Sue thought he had it rough. Further, did the cow and the dog have names, and were they as repetitive as Diddling Diddle's? It is also bizarre that the author thought a spoon would run away with a dish instead of a fork, and if I had been a dish, I would have selected a saucer as my partner.
Also, did you know London Bridge is constructed of quatrains in trochaic tetrameter catalectic, a most common form that relies on a double repetition rather than a rhyming scheme, frequently employed in children's rhymes and stories? I didn't. I simply thought the rhyme was entertaining as a three-year-old.
In closing this essay from this demented mind of mine, it would be nice to attract a larger following to coalesce with such ravings as I feel assured there are others that Rave grammatically, as well as at dance parties.
 Recognized |
The photos in the collage are supposedly representative of the characters in the rhymes I wrote of and are all my own (the pic) save for London Bridge whose credit belongs to Yoss Traose that I found on Pexels.com
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© Copyright 2024. Tom Horonzy All rights reserved.
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