"××'s fart was shocking, and a fart collapsed in Italy." The king of Italy was watching the play, smelled the breath, and felt satisfied. Whoever collapses stinks, makes him a professor; whoever collapses loud, makes him the headmaster..." This absurd and witty slip of the tongue, although it is difficult to climb the elegant hall, presumably many people have sung loudly to nasty people in childhood. And the more poetic and idyllic nursery rhymes may appear on a gentle night of the moon, "The moon goes I also go, I make friends with the moon" "Moonlight, Xiu CaiLang, ride a white horse, cross Nantang." ”......
But as we get older, we don't think about what the definition of nursery rhymes is. Widely circulated, familiar with the mouth, but with and fart can it be counted as a nursery rhyme? In addition to being catchy, what cultural connotations and what kind of spiritual comfort are contained in words such as "moonlight and luminous light"? In addition to adding some fun time for children, what is the artistic value of local nursery rhymes? How many nursery rhymes we hear as children can we remember when we grow up, and how many are we clearly aware that a certain work has had an important impact on the construction of our spiritual world?
Wang Shuainai, a researcher of children's literature, gender and contemporary literature and culture, has long written a column for the "Beijing News Children's Book", combing and commenting on the Chinese edition of the Caddick Gold Medal picture book. The Rooster: A Book of American Rhymes and Jingles is a collection of classic nursery rhymes from all over the United States, and Wang Shuai nai hopes to start from this picture book and compare the differences between American nursery rhymes, European "Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes" and Chinese nursery rhymes from various angles, in order to reflect on the problems existing in local nursery rhyme anthologies and possible future development directions.
On the left is the 1945 English version. On the right is the Chinese version introduced by forest fish.
Are the nursery rhymes we sing too shallow and straightforward? Why do the children in nursery rhymes have no names, but their grandparents, aunts and sisters-in-law always appear frequently? When the boys in nursery rhymes are playing happily, how come girls always have endless work? How can a poetic nursery rhyme that was once passed down by word of mouth come back to life in the present?
On the occasion of the New Year's Festival, the 1946 gold medal work "Rooster Oh Oh Cry" is a nursery rhyme collection, and I don't want to write it as a manuscript with an overly academic atmosphere. Completing an article that introduces the anthropological ritual significance or historical origins behind American nursery rhymes from beginning to end is good, but it is a "routine operation" of this literary criticism, or we can not limit ourselves to this American nursery rhyme, but use this as an opportunity to discuss in the comparison what can be done to classicize the local original nursery rhyme anthology.
If some of the articles in this column (click here to enter the column) can be completed in a gossipy and "less theoretical" way, discussion and inquiry, and may be able to "inspire" or continue some thinking and "action" after the article is over - then this old nursery rhyme collected from American folklore must be an excellent choice - in this warm house in the middle of winter, why not embrace the ease of talking about the sky, the looseness and enthusiasm of boiling tea in the hearth, and the snow outside the window of the real or imaginary, inviting the reader to come with you." Talk about the things that were (or maybe never have been)"?
Why we are not higher
A collection of native nursery rhymes recognized by the public?
Written by | Wang Shuainai
The so-called "Three Kingdoms Nursery Rhymes" here roughly refers to the nursery rhymes that have become "classics" in China, Britain and the United States. It is said to be "roughly" mainly because although the completed version of "Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes" dates back to the 1760 British bookseller John Newberry's "Melody or Lullaby of Mother Goose" (which has been scattered), its variants are spread throughout the European continent. Even the "starting point" we are discussing today, the American nursery rhyme collection picture book "Rooster Oh Oh Cry" has many articles with the same title, such as "Circle Around the Rose", "Yankee Song", "Jack Horner", "Pea Porridge", "Jack and Jill", "Miss Mafitte Jr.", "Dumbopty the Short", and so on.
"Rooster Oh Oh Cry" English edition of the inner page.
Among the Caddick Gold Medal works, there are also other poetic genre texts with quite folk colors. But when reading a collection of works called "Rooster Oh Oh Cry", known as the "American version of Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes", it is still difficult not to associate and confuse the question: We don't seem to have a similar collection of local nursery rhymes with high public recognition.
The academic research and folk concerns of original children's literature have remained divided for a long time, and in this regard, domestic research peers may have seen no surprise, such as original children's novels in various genres of academic research articles harvested more than half of the country, but after excluding the influence of various hard or semi-hard "must-read list" requirements, the public reading recognition of most works is quite average; and picture books are the opposite, the market performance is in full swing, but in the field of academic research, even if you count the introduction of picture books from abroad, Search results for related papers are sparse, and most of the existing research focuses on pedagogy and psychology rather than literature or fine arts; nursery rhymes, which are of little concern. Perhaps it was only in the first years of parenthood that people would put them in their shopping carts as a tool for phonetics and literacy training, and then stop paying attention to them.
As a researcher of children's literature, when writing this article, I found myself with a lot of "basic" confusion about the literary genre of nursery rhymes, especially local nursery rhymes: in addition to adding some funny time for children, what is the artistic value of most local nursery rhyme anthologies on the market today? How many nursery rhymes we hear as children can we remember when we grow up, and how many are we clearly aware that a certain work has had an important impact on the construction of our spiritual world? If the answer is more negative, is this a question of the genre itself, or of the level of the editor? If it is a matter of genre, will we simply be reluctant and unwilling to simply use nursery rhymes as tools of early education and abandon the expectation of making them one of the spiritual shores? If it is a matter of selection, then presumably after some books are carefully produced and selected by people with better aesthetic standards, the value and influence of the above will be better than our generation, but what kind of books are good nursery rhyme books? If the latter hypothesis is a footnote to the truth, what can it and a book like Rooster Oh Cry give us some reference in?
These questions, but I hope that this article can explore and grope the outline of some answers.
Moonlight, Luminous Light: When the Moon becomes the base of the feeling world
A few days ago, I opened the "Chinese Children's Songs" compiled by Mr. Zhu Jiefan (Mr. Zhu Chengli Jinxi and Gu Jiegang, this book collected 1499 Chinese nursery rhymes that crossed the provinces, preserving local dialects, one-fifth from local prefectural and county chronicles, four-fifths for the author's field recording, the first edition was published in Taiwan in 1977, and not long ago the mainland had a simplified version of this book. When this book is regarded as a classic of the comprehensive integration and study of Chinese nursery rhymes), when I read that Mr. Zhu wrote "The children's song of 'Moonlight' is the most commonly circulated in the north and south" at the beginning of the chapter, I did not feel that my mind was moved.
"Chinese Children's Songs", edited by Zhu Jiefan, lefu culture | Morning Light Press, January 2022 edition.
The last article in the column happened to be about the princess conundrum that asked the king's father to pick the moon (I want to pick the moon – how to use fatherly love to answer the most difficult "test question" in history?). It is also said that "since ancient times, regardless of whether it is in the middle or the outside, human beings seem to be accustomed to throwing their strange and irrepressible feelings to the moon": the mother coaxes the child to sleep and sings "The moon is bright, the wind is light, and the leaves cover the window"; when there is an unambitious elder brother who misses his brother, he must first ask "When is the bright moon"; some people will turn into wolves when they see the full moon to release their wildness; there are girls with long pigtails who guard "love and justice" in the name of the moon; mountain people jump the moon to pray for peace and happiness; "Youyang Miscellaneous Tricks" The restless head must have flown under the moon rather than in the darkness; not to mention the famous face of the moon (the world's first science fiction film) that was hit by a shell in the history of the world's cinema.
Zhu Jiefan said that at first, he only thought that it was the spring and summer when children were hiding outdoors to play, the world under the moonlight was shrouded like a light veil, and nursery rhymes were to praise the moon, but later learned that they were just borrowing the moon to rise. In fact, it is better to say that "rising up" is a higher level of praise, and only when one thing has become the basis of our understanding and feeling of the world, will we subconsciously hand it:
Moonlight, luminous light, boats come and wait, cars come to carry.
Carrying it to the center of the river, the shrimp male old crab worships Guanyin.
(Wuhua, Guangdong)
Moonlight, Xiu Cailang, riding a white horse, crossing Nantang.
(Taiwan)
Moonlight, sea light, carrying water, washing school.
(Longhui, Hunan)
The moon shines, and the cows roar to the beams,
There was no grass on the beam, and it hit the ditch.
(Zhongning, Ningxia)
In addition, there are variations such as "Moonlight Hall" and "Moon Circle", as well as many nursery rhymes such as "Moon Grandma", "Moon Brother", "Moonlight Father", "Moon Grandfather" and so on, which have spread in the north and south of the river, and even I still remember that more than ten years ago, there was a "Liaozhai Qi" TV series with "The Moon is High, the Stars Are Few" as the beginning of the ending song, and its melody, instrumentation, plus rough and desolate male voice interpretation, and "Liaozhai" "Under the Moon Is Born Ghost, The River Around the Lonely Soul" is very matched. Up to now, the plot and the lyrics have been forgotten nine times out of ten, only this sentence is the most impressive.
Similarly, there are "autumn geese two lines of rain on the river", which are examples of the beginning of the meteorological teaching "all out of the mood", although the succession is weak, no longer more than the opening, but can let many viewers remember the entire work for many years because of a sentence, which is also a glory and comfort for the author.
"The mountains are high and the moon is small, the water is falling out of the rocks", the walking is cool, the ghost should not sleep, in the experience of reverie about the moon shared by all mankind, we have a classical aesthetic tradition that has spread for thousands of years. If there is a "Chinese Nursery Rhyme" that can become a classic, I think there must be some images and sentences like the "moonlight" that is almost a "matrix structure" that has the power to live forever through the millennium, and is scattered and integrated into the body and essence of every Chinese in the north of The Mountains and the South China Sea.
"Chinese Children's Songs" is actually taken.
Repositioning the category of "nursery rhymes": Take one Chinese and one Western nursery rhyme as an example
What exactly is the definition of nursery rhyme? Does it have to be written for folk circulation rather than writers (even if the words are simple and rhythmic, and there is already a certain degree of transmission among folk, especially among children)? The origin of this problem can be said as an example of one Chinese and one Western two works.
"Briggs Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes Golden Dictionary", by Raymond Briggs / Translated by Li Hui, Lefu Culture | Beijing United Publishing Company June 2021 edition.
One is a poem in the 1966 Kate Greenaway Prize-winning "The Lost Comma I" in the 1966 Kate Greenaway Award(snuggles) (fine-tuned on the basis of Li Hui's original translation for later explanations):
Lost comma I
A peacock' tail seems to be burning as I can see,
A blazing comet fell hail as I saw,
A cloud as I saw with ivy curls,
A firm oak tree crawls on the ground as I see it,
An ant devours a whale as I saw,
A raging sea overflowing with beer foam as I could see,
A Venetian glass as far as I could see sixteen feet deep,
A well, as I saw, filled with tears of weeping,
Their eyes, as I saw, were in a cloud of flames,
A house as tall and tall as the moon as I saw,
The sun is as I see at twelve o'clock in the morning,
I saw the people who saw this wonderful sight.
Corresponding original English version:
Missing Commas I
I saw a Peacock(,) with a fiery tail,
I saw a Blazing Comet(,) drop down hail,
I saw a Cloud(,) with Ivy circled round,
I saw a sturdy Oak(,) creep on the ground,
I saw a Pismire(,) swallow up a Whale,
I saw a raging Sea(,) brim full of Ale,
I saw a Venice Glass(,) Sixteen foot deep,
I saw a well(,) full of mens tears that weep,
I saw their eyes(,) all in a flame of fire,
I saw a House(,) as big as the Moon and higher,
I saw the Sun(,) even in the midst of night,
I saw the man(,) that saw this wondrous sight.
The poem is very interesting. I put parentheses in the original text, we first assume that the comma in the text does not exist and read it against the Chinese version, it is not difficult to find that its words are good, the image style is magnificent, the writing is also quite elegant, compared to the simple and authentic folk literature, it is more like a literati poem; after giving it a participle step, it can be seen more, this is a nearly perfect pseudo-heroic double rhyme poem - strictly following the rhythm of each line of five-tone steps to suppress the Yang, double-line dual rhyme, two lines of rhyme and the whole text is only repeated at intervals, Even the style of writing carries some heroic poetic sadness and majesty.
Inside page of the Briggs Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes.
It is said to be "pseudo", mainly because the poem is short and obviously tinged with grotesque and playful implications, and it is more like Alexander Pope's famous imitation and satire of the genre than to Alexander Pope's famous imitation and satire of the genre; and, according to the Oxford Nursery Rhyme Dictionary, the poem can be traced back to the 1665 Excerpts of Caroline (except for one sentence). Such excerpts are generally a mixture of literary passages, witty remarks, sketches, anagrams, etc., which the owner is likely to carry to social occasions), while the most complete version can be traced back to 1671's Westminster Drollery, or A Choice Collection Of the Newest Songs & Poems both at Court and Theatres), a collection of mixed poems collected by "a person of quality" (in the seventeenth century, generally referring to the upper class). Judging from the above analysis and sources of stylistic creation, this poem is indeed likely to be a masterpiece of the game of the literati or artists of the time who imitated the "heroic two-line body".
Now that we add the comma back and read it again, that is, from the second half of one line to the first half of the next line as a sentence, the meaning of the poem is very different.
"Recovered Comma" version:
A peacock as I saw,
The tail seemed to be burning, a blazing comet as I could see,
Hail fell, a cloud as I saw,
There are ivy curls around, a firm oak tree as I saw,
Creeping on the ground, an ant as I saw,
Devouring a whale, a raging sea as I saw,
Overflowing with beer foam, a Venetian glass as I saw,
Sixteen feet deep, a well as I saw,
Filled with tears of weeping, their eyes as I saw,
In the midst of a flame, a house as I saw,
As high and high as the moon, the sun as I saw,
At twelve o'clock in the morning, I saw the man who saw this wonderful sight.
In ancient China, there were palindromic poems, and the literati often used them to show off their skills or games, such as the famous "flowers and return to Ma Rufei". The lost comma I above can be said to be the English version of the "stacked palindrome poem", or we can call it "a trick poem" as Margaret Atwood did.
The zigzag poems like this are also more like the design of the literati after pondering the text than like the natural generation of folk. However, Farce of Westminster is classified as an anthology of "folk" books; in the 19th century it was a "prop" for girls' daily word games; and in contemporary times, Raymond Burriguez has also included it in the Golden Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes of Mother Goose. All of this seems to indicate that, at least in the United Kingdom, the rules on the identity of the creator/source of nursery rhymes are not so strict, as long as children are willing to accept it, even if their words and sentences are more elegant and complex than folk oral literature, it is entirely possible to be included in the "Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes", which we generally consider to be included in the collection of "authentic folk oral literature".
And this is very different from my experience after reading various nursery rhyme collections in China.
Whether it is Zhu Jiefan's collection of "Chinese Nursery Rhymes" (Zhu Jiefan did explain in the preface why the book was named "Chinese Nursery Rhymes" instead of the word "nursery rhymes", the most important point is that the nursery rhymes under his definition are political and less related to children's lives), or "Chinese Nursery Rhymes" selected from thousands of nursery rhymes collected by Yu Ningyuan from 1996, or the newly published more systematic and comprehensive "Chinese Traditional Nursery Rhyme Book Series" or the relatively good market response, all kinds of "old nursery rhymes" In the collection of nursery rhymes named after key words, the editors seem to focus on a single short work that reflects the shallow language, simple meaning and structure, and strong dialect characteristics.
I think this is probably one of the reasons why our "nursery rhymes" are difficult to become a deep spiritual supply, blindly pursuing simple and straightforward and easy to understand, but lacking requirements for whether the meaning behind the shallow words is worth regurgitating. We have repeatedly said that good children's literature is the "art of shallow language", not only "shallow language" and no "art".
In the nursery rhymes to infiltrate "deep thinking" and read to appear long afterglow, the mother goose nursery rhymes can indeed stand out in the works of the Three Kingdoms, such as "The Wise Man of Fool Town", "Three Happy Welshmen", "If the Wish is a Horse" (here and the Anglo-American nursery rhymes quoted below have not been able to fully reflect the rhyme of the original text due to the translation of the Chinese version, so I have to ask readers to read the meaning of the text for the time being), and so on:
If the wish is a horse, the beggar will ride it too.
If the radish is a watch, on me
I will also wear one.
And if "if" and "and"
Is a variety of pots and pans,
The tinkerer will have no work to do.
The poem is read squarely to express the rarity of some ultra-utilitarian pursuit and the difficulty of its realization, and conversely reading it can also be regarded as a more interesting revelation- a world in which a beggar can also have wishes and gallop by it, a world in which a turnip watch mocks the artificial scale of time, a world liberated by a pot maker from the pot, presumably a world with less suffering and more free leisure time, right?
Looking back, our current understanding and positioning of nursery rhymes is likely to make some words elegant and not difficult, can give children long-term aesthetic and philosophical support, and at the same time, good works with beautiful rhythms cannot be included in the framework of "nursery rhymes", and over time, this genre will become synonymous with "smooth mouth with childlike fun".
Here I would like to give an example of some of the contemporary musicians who are trying to find and renew old nursery rhymes represented by Xiaohe and the works they have found.
In 2018, Xiaohe launched the "Rumor Hunting Project" to collect nursery rhymes from the memories of the elderly everywhere, extract the works they think are worth passing on to today's and future children, compose music for them, and do live concerts in parks, academies, primary schools, and courtyards in Beijing, Hangzhou, Shanghai and other places, and bring people to learn to sing nursery rhymes with the elderly.
I have to mention "Autumn Willow". This poem was provided by Mr. Liang Wenhai, who was found at the Hangzhou Station activity, and was originally a school song in the Republic of China period.
B station "Rumor Hunting Project Autumn Willow" video screenshot.
At the beginning of the last century, intellectuals who returned from overseas taught music theory to children in new-style schools, selected beautiful melodies or lively people from Western religious music or Japanese songs, and filled in words with Chinese aesthetic meaning and Chinese children's life interests, which formed the original "school music".
The "Farewell", which we have known for generations, is probably the most famous of these songs, written by Master Hongyi Li Shutong and re-filled the lyrics based on the melody of the American folk song "Dreaming of Home and Mother". The words of "Autumn Willow" are said to have been written by Uncle Li and written by his re-disciple Chen Xiaokong. From the perspective of poetry and poetic style, it does have some "same breath" charm as "Farewell":
Willows along the embankment, by autumn, the leaves flutter haphazardly
The leaves are gone, and only the thin branches are left
Think of the day, green and shady, spring is good
Today, it is deserted and the autumn color is old
The wind is miserable, the rain is miserable
The king is gone, the vision is gone
The foreground is completely different
A thought, a look back, not a sad.
This poem contains typical of the Chinese poetic tradition of "revisiting the old place" and "tragic autumn". Gu Sui said in the "Poetry of the Camel's Temple", "Autumn is desolate, and it should be written with delicate words and sounds." The weak willow of the Long River is a common farewell scene, and in autumn, the slender and soft willow leaves like eyebrows add three points of sadness and lingering feelings. Among them, the three words of "chaos, fineness, and oldness" refine the old way, and the invisible autumn order is transformed into a material form and a moving scene, which is sad and lonely in the same sense of the dual sense of seasonal color and life encounters with Jiang Kui's "If the jun is half autumn, the willow xiaoxiao of Xifengmen Lane" is the same seasonal color realm and life encounter. Both "yin yin" and "miserable" have a hazy fog, which is the low mourning and confusion background of the spring and autumn seasons relying on the fluttering poplar flowers and the lascivious rain on the face. If there is still some green melting and venting in the spring scenery that day, then the current autumn wind and autumn rain are miserable, and it is already a positive encounter with the "two vast worlds".
However, when Xiaohe and his friends re-orchestrated and sang it again with the children, this school song of the last century was just like dead wood breaking dust, and suddenly there was a living and new soul - the crystal dream of the carillon, the innocence and natural optimism of the child's voice are the innocence and eternal hope of life, and then the addition of trombone and male voice injects some tragic and magnificent feelings into this school song, so that the repetition of "innocence and experience" makes the original word lead directly from the slender autumn of Xiao Ser to the original of this nation. It is also a more chaotic poetic face - "In the past, I used to be, Willow Yiyi; now I come to think, rain and snow", it has become a song that will throw people to the snow-filled sky and loneliness, "put to death and live later" and no longer stay in the yellow leaves falling weak and desolate moments.
The singing of such a school song has touched many people and has also become a representative work of the old nursery rhymes of the "Rumor Hunting Project" team that "unearthed and renewed". In my opinion, "Autumn Willow" is in a way very close to the nature of the "Lost Comma I" mentioned above---it is specially created, the literary quality is beautiful, and adults and children are willing to read and sing, and even its spiritual and stylistic forms carry the classic poetic tradition of their own people. Not only does it give me a more specific reference to further ponder the question raised at the beginning of this section, that is, if we do not begin to reposition the category of "nursery rhymes" and still edit and create nursery rhyme picture books with the current default concept, then in what name and system do we install works like "Autumn Willow" and introduce them to children, can we only meet them piecemeal? At the same time, it gave me another idea.
When nursery rhymes meet music, time spreads like brocade
Other nursery rhymes discovered by the "Song Hunting Project" such as "Lugou Bridge", "Little Bell", "Four Birds Song", also like "Autumn Willow", the music in the process of dissemination is very effective in strengthening the aesthetic expression of the text, such as "Lugou Bridge":
Lugou Bridge, Lugou River, Lugou Bridge on the camel walk.
The camel bell on the bridge clanged, and the reeds under the bridge turned white.
Lugou Bridge, Lugou River, Lugou Bridge on the lions.
There are countless lions on the bridge, and the reeds under the bridge are white.
The music highlights the most beautiful last sentence of the original word, so that the work has the unexpected joy of the final song and the song into the poem, and the mood of the nursery rhyme has been enhanced.
This reminds me of Dorje, a "musical theatre picture book" I stumbled upon last winter, which used nursery rhymes to write about the daily life of Tibetan boys and the unique aesthetics of Tibetan culture — such as an anabolic affinity for the sun, dirt, cattle and sheep. The rare style of painting is impressive, but the most special thing is that many pages are cleverly buried in the QR code of these nursery rhyme singing versions, and readers can hear the voices of Tibetan children coming from the depths of the picture.
Picture book art is extremely inclusive, as mentioned in "Let's Tell the Story Better", some picture books can already scan the inner page to display the two-dimensional content on the page in three-dimensional animation in electronic products, so why can't we invite music to join in some suitable works?
Borrowing modern technology, it brings children more dimensional artistic experience, and also enriches our understanding of the literary genre of nursery rhymes. If picture books are the comprehensive art of text× pictures× book design, or we can also create some nursery rhymes as "comprehensive art", when adding melodies, matching instruments, and finding the right singer, these nursery rhymes will suddenly open like a small magic box, and time will float out like brocade around us, then these books, like Xiaohe said, are not songs from the past, but the memories of old people.
The children in the native nursery rhymes always live in a large string of "kinship networks"
Whether it is "Rooster Oh Oh Cry" or the Mother Goose nursery rhyme, the reader will always meet one child image after another with a name: Mary, a little girl lying there in bed, Jack and Jill who go to the mountain to fetch water and roll down the mountain, Annie hiding under the pot, Johnny who cuts her hair, Miss Muffet jr. always sits on the bench and eats cheese, and the person hiding in the corner is another Jack- Jack Horner with a name, and the Chinese nursery rhyme reading book is not easy to see the "name" of the child. Naming a character will have meaning, it is a kind of "relationship" establishment, once the virtual character has a name, the reader will recognize him from the vague faces of the vast world, our eyes will always follow the name, he will be a more specific and sensible person, its outline is clearer, and life is more vivid.
Corresponding to the invisible name, there are not many images of specific children in local nursery rhymes, and they are often integrated into the background board of the narrative in the form of general references. In the non-picture book version of the nursery rhyme set, the modern child's concept of the child/childhood as an independent life stage is more seriously eroded, the child belongs to the "personal self" of the spiritual world is seriously insufficient, the child always lives in a large string of "kinship network" - grandparents, grandparents, grandparents, parents, sisters and sisters appear frequently, brothers always have to suffer from lack of sufficient money to marry their wives, so the little doll picking a pumpkin or a lotus root will be evaluated by the grandmother as "good boy, shaved head and braided to find a sister-in-law." In the end, the spiritual ingenuity of the sisters and sisters always cannot escape to the matter of "marrying".
The children in Rooster Oh Wow Seem to enjoy independent games more, and the narrative is basically only a child protagonist, or a child-like animal, and the narrator is often the child himself. The narrative basically revolves around children's games, such as "I'm going to Mrs. Washington's house and Meimei has a cup of tea." There are still five gingerbreads to eat, or should I take you with me? "I have a dog whose name is Stick. What does Stick stick like to do? Roll on the ground. They yearn to go out and see the world or be naughty, but they are less punished, and even if they do, they are limited to verbal warnings and have limited power: "Mom, I want to go swimming, good daughter, no problem!" Clothes and hats hang branches, don't get your feet wet" "Daddy Ma, nail horseshoe, mama ma, also nailed." Baby ponies don't need nails and run barefoot. ”
As mentioned earlier, compared with the mother goose nursery rhymes, the aesthetic standard of the American nursery rhyme collection "Rooster Oh Oh Cry" is not amazing, and it lacks the afterglow that can be chewed for a long time, but it is still passed in terms of showing respect for children's will and equal dialogue.
Looking back at the Chinese children in the local nursery rhyme anthology, it is too hard and too often taught lessons. For example, the lazy man was warned that "the white rice could not be eaten, and had to suffer for a lifetime", and the introduction added that "this nursery rhyme made a kind mockery of the lazy man and reminded people to do everything well"; for example, "I gave my grandmother melon seeds, and my grandmother thought I was dirty; I cooked noodle soup for my grandmother, and my grandmother thought I cooked it hard; I steamed rice for my grandmother, rice, steamed well, and my grandmother praised me for filial piety"; and for example, in "Little Five Children little six children" who were selected into several nursery rhyme collections, the protagonist came home to drink soup too quickly and was hot, in "Rooster Oh Oh Cry" and "Rooster Oh Oh Cry" and " There happens to be a similar title in the "Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes", which says, "Some people like bean porridge hot, some people like bean porridge cold." Some people put it in the pot, nine days and nine nights are not too long", the two contrasts, the difference in the direction is more subtle, and the introduction to the old Chinese nursery rhyme picture book seems to be afraid that the reader can not understand the educational heart in the poem, and added a sentence: "Through the lessons of the two, children will understand that climbing high, drinking hot soup and other things are dangerous."
Whoops, how hard Chinese children are, how delicate they are!
Take the whole set of "Traditional Chinese Nursery Rhyme Book Series" of the Relay Society as an example, which includes a lot of children working in the old years or suggesting that children should learn to work as soon as possible and enter the state of production, such as "One Mother And Sisters", which began as "one mother and sister." The eldest sister learned to embroider Mandarin duck pillows, and the second sister learned to embroider peony flowers. The remaining three sisters did not learn much, carrying a bamboo basket to plant melons", the lives of several girls were arranged clearly by the "production task", and a smooth slip was added in the middle, and finally wrote "Steel knife down to cut two petals, black seeds red sweet sand." Men will farm when they eat, and girls will tie flowers when they eat", such as "one-year-old petite, two-year-old petite, three-year-old picking wood daddy burn, four-year-old learning weaving, five-year-old learning to cultivate cloth, six-year-old learning embroidery". It can be seen that the root of this kind of writing is that children were still regarded as reserves for adulthood at that time, and it is not that we now recognize childhood as an independent stage of life to respect and value the irreplaceable precious values of this stage.
At the same time, there seems to be more paternalistic order and children's punishment endings in the local nursery rhyme collection, such as "Little Baper", "Puppy, Go to Nanshan." Pick up rice and dried rice. Daddy a bowl, mother a bowl, angry dog white eyes", and then "Selling Sugar":
The one who sells sugar, the blind bell.
What sugar? Official sugar.
Give me one I taste.
I went up to the house and got the money.
My mother slapped me.
Whoever sells sugar, you go,
My mother came out with no good words.
In the introduction, this set of books says that "it aims to provide children with excellent texts for recitation and reading, provide parents with essential materials for children's enlightenment education, provide teachers with references for children's language teaching, and provide valuable research materials for researchers and creators", but it seems that its content performance does not fit the first three recommended purposes. The performance of the children's view and the concept of childhood tests the skills of our nursery rhyme editors, which is the professional bottom line that modern children's literature practitioners should always remind themselves of, and the challenges of nursery rhyme selection are more than this.
Girls in native nursery rhymes are more associated with labor production
The gender view is an inescapable section.
As mentioned earlier, the children in local nursery rhymes are always assigned to more production tasks and are expected to become laborers who contribute to the family as soon as possible, and girls are more associated with labor production than boys, taking the "Chinese Traditional Nursery Rhyme Book Series and Children's Fun Songs" as an example, in which the sex ratio of men and women who write children's labor articles is 11:37 (if the number of characters is counted, the ratio is even more disparity); marriage songs encourage women to be skillful, but in the end, "excellent skills" are attributed to "finding a good husband".
Particularly typical gender inequality texts such as "Come and Play After Drinking Soup":
The owner's child,
The child of the West family,
After drinking the soup, let's play!
Owner Nell,
Nell of the West House,
After drinking the soup, let's take the sole!
The double standard of gender in the nursery rhyme above need not be repeated. In the sister narrative, the contrast and hostility between two women, which is common in folk literature, are also reflected, such as this "Tang Pear Tree":
……
The big sister slept on the gold bed,
The silver bed where the second sister slept,
Only the third sister has nowhere to sleep,
Sleep in a broken basket.
The golden doll held by the eldest sister,
The silver doll held by the second sister,
Only the third sister did not have anything to hold,
A hug of a gas toad,
Hug over, whoa, whoa,
Hug over, cluck, wow,
Open the back door and fall to kill it.
Some of the bad habits of the old era, such as child brides and small feet, have also been selected, and there are no specific examples here. Traditional gender rhetoric also focuses on another important topic to be mentioned next, namely the theme of love.
"Chinese Children's Songs" is actually taken.
Common in local nursery rhyme anthologies "Girls who can work marry well"
It is not uncommon for local nursery rhyme anthologies to write about "saving money to marry a daughter-in-law" or "a girl who can work to marry well", but rarely talks about "love" head-on, and it is more difficult to see love-themed articles in picture books. In anthologies for the general reader, there are very few simple slips of the tongue like "Imperial City Roots" that barely reflect the needs of women's lust from some point of view (but it is also just a slip of the tongue):
Imperial City Roots,
Slip through the door,
There stood a little chick at the door,
There's a point.
White cloth sweat pants,
Wear a coiled pendant on the ear,
The comb on the head is a big bun,
Smearing powder with rouge,
Who is my little son-in-law?
The narrator of the nursery rhyme is very wonderful, this text can be seen as both the observer's ridicule and the girl's psychological activity, but on the whole, in the hard-won "love" theme article, the girl is still in a relatively passive position, even if the latter interpretation, she has never really expressed it.
In "Rooster Oh Wow" there is a snoozing little girl Mary, the mother will not get up no matter how she screams, until the sentence "Give you a young man, the cheeks are rosy and handsome", Mary immediately replied: "Okay, Mom, I get up." I get up, I get up. Okay, Mom, I'll get up. Get up right now. ”
Illustrator Peter Sham's portrayal of Mary as a little girl is probably a speculation that the rhetoric of "repetition" in the poem is more like a playful little girl than a girl, and the combination of words and pictures makes the reader can't help but be amused. In contrast, the little girl who bounced up from bed to see the handsome guy also played a funny role, but occupied a much more active gender position. Speaking of human nature in a naïve image and tone, a school of nature is not terrible, in fact, this is also a convenient door for children's literature to open for the early introduction of gender and sex education, we completely use this kind of genre wisely, there is no need to keep this subject secret.
In another nursery rhyme, we can see the singer's praise for "love" itself:
Bright red roses,
Blue violet.
The sweetest thing in the world is sugar,
You're sweeter than honey.
You and I love harder than gold,
Knives and axes cut continuously.
As long as the cat has a long tail,
I love you forever.
Another example is the game song "Throw a Handkerchief", which writes in the tone of a little girl, "Write a letter to my lover and throw it on the side of the road." A boy picked it up and put it in his pocket"; in Little Sally Waters, the little girl cried her nose for a young man, and the singer finally encouraged her to "cheer up a little, dry her tears and stand up." Fly to the east and fly to the west, fly into the arms of a lover", the original English text of the last sentence is better "fly to the one you love best". That is to say, "Rooster Oh Oh Cry" praises the love between independent individuals in modern society, which is obviously only related to the freely chosen lover and their affection, without many complicated relatives and hard work (in particular, these tasks are either dowries or dowries, pointing to a task-style marriage rather than love itself, such as the type of text mentioned above, from the perspective of a little boy, who strives to pick melons and beans, and the last singer will prompt a future in-law relationship, he will get a sister-in-law, His efforts would be ridiculed as "good boy, shaving his head and braiding to find his sister-in-law". Even if there is a traditional folk literature and culture of irony about uncle-in-law love and a close attention to the "ethics" of married women, the emphasis on family clan relations after marriage is clearly greater than "love"), and female children are active and vocal here, or they are also encouraged by positive warmth.
In the game song's imitation of the peasant's married life, "Rooster Oh Oh Cry" says to the protagonist who has taken care of the farmland: "Next, marry your wife and welcome your bride." Open the door and please come in. Hug her and kiss her. After getting married, you must take care of your family, and you must count your words. Be kind, be kind! Don't let your wife lack matches." Here, nursery rhymes make demands on the superiors of the gender power structure — which reminds me of Zhu Jiefan's defense of the nursery rhyme of "Chasing and Beating The Wife" in "Chinese Children's Songs" as "a joke that cannot be seen." It's just the joy of boudoir life, people don't notice, think it's sadistic... The strange thing is that the wife did not go down to the church to beg", Mr. Zhu was born a hundred years ago, but today we must know that at that time, the wife could not go down to the church to ask for it, it was really because there was no way to go, and literary satire and ridicule, but all those who face the weak must be a light beating with compassion, good literature (naturally including satire and humor literature) is always more sword-pointing to the strong, and there is no longer a joke that the weak are beaten into the sky and the earth and have nowhere to hide.
On the same page, a Hangzhou nursery rhyme collected by Mr. Zhu Jiefan is short and clear, but also quite a Chinese companion's three tastes of fireworks and subtle feelings:
Foot on the chaff fire, husband and wife sit opposite each other,
Blanch a pot of white wine, salt and vegetables marinade roll tofu.
In this regard, Mr. Zhu Jiefan commented, "If it is in the West Lake, and there is snow flying outside, it is even more heavenly." There is no third person, newly married, the child has not yet been born", it is really good. Although the sentences are written vulgarly, they are actually extremely elegant, and it is the natural completion of "there is no right or wrong, even no beauty and ugliness". Just these four sentences, all external seasonal seasons, inner affection readers can make up for themselves, especially Chinese readers can understand their meaning. Such short ballads are counted as love or marriage themes, privately think that the nursery rhyme collection for children can still make up for the lack of related themes in the local anthologies, I don't know what the kings think?
Old customs, old rituals, old worship
I think that editors should pay attention to removing some old customs, old rituals, and old worship that are obviously contrary to modern science and values from the low-level picture books, such as "I am full of books, and I will enter the Beijing Examination next year", such as "Pulling back the boiled eggs of local vegetables, saying that the sick spirits will be postponed for many years".
Can and farts also enter nursery rhymes?
Finally, there is a question, some nursery rhymes have and, there are dirty words, but there are also witty, offensive roots included in them, and how much tolerance do parents have for this? Looking back on the nursery rhymes I remember, many of them are actually such school word of mouth, such as "×× farts shocked the world, a fart collapsed to Italy." The king of Italy was watching the play, smelled the breath, and felt satisfied. Whoever collapses stinks and makes him a professor, who collapses and makes him the headmaster" and so on. If we accept that they continue to circulate orally, will we accept some of them going into the written system?
Writing this, these nine paragraphs can be completed, and this article has been written intermittently for nearly a week, which is nothing more than a little unwillingness of "literary lovers", unwilling to admit that a genre can only be used as a "tool" and cannot become a source of energy for continuous aesthetic growth and deep thinking.
I used to think that only Yue opera is the best genre for opera "Dream of the Red Chamber", even the Kunqu opera that belongs to the same Jiangnan opera genre is difficult to surpass, after listening to the Kunqu version of "Bao Dai Chuhui", I found that the Yue opera Red Chamber has the sincerity of the original "natural attitude of a period of wind", and although the Kunqu Red Chamber can still be scrutinized in the lyrics, it shows the strength of the original work's "dream, refinement and loneliness"; when "new literature" was not born, how many Hongru Elders thought that there was no hope for making a good article in the vernacular, but we had "Diary of a Madman", "Four Generations Together", "The Same Hall", "The Same Hall"; The Legend of Hulan River. Yes, I am convinced that there is no desperate genre and vessel, only people who cannot write or do. An artifact or genre may have a natural character, but man can transcend the shackles and make the "impossible" possible and eventually become real. The wide and long-term circulation of "Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes" also gave me more confidence.
I think of the scene of the small river chasing rumors, because there is the sound of mountain springs nearby, when he asked everyone "can you hear, there has always been a sound of water", the children said "I heard" "I also heard", a little girl pointed to the distance and replied: "I heard the sea coming from over there!" ”
It's wonderful, she's not saying she hears "there's the sound of the sea over there," she says she hears "the sea coming from over there." Maybe there really was a sea in the distance, and the waves were raging and rolling in.
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Written by | Wang Shuai Nai
Editor| Shen Chan, Xiao Shuyan
Proofreading | Chen Diyan