Jack Be Nimble With a Switchblade

Hey Diddle Diddle, the Cat and the Fiddle,

the Cow jumped over the Moon,

the Little Dog laughed to see such sport,

and the Dish ran away with the Spoon.

Generation to generation, Mother Goose delights babies with her rhythms and rhymes. But the much-loved storyteller has not always been an innocent queen of the nursery. In the 17th and 18th centuries when the verses we identify with Mother Goose first appeared, they were clever commentaries on vice-ridden times. For example, Little Jack Horner who “put in his thumb and pulled out a plum and said ‘What a good boy am I’ ” was rumored to be a cunning land agent with his finger in more than a few questionable deals.

How fitting then that in our own vice-ridden times, Eve Merriam should return Mother Goose to her original purpose. When Merriam’s next-door neighbor had a purse stolen at knife-point, the poet altered “Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jump over the candlestick” to read “Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Snap the blade and give it a flick.” Using familiar rhymes for a new purpose seemed a way to draw attention to the violence in urban America. If poetry could not forestall such attacks, it might at least help the law-abiding be a bit more wary. This did not seem a particularly radical act. But the 1969 “The Inner City Mother Goose” met with violent opposition. One California teacher was fired after lending the book to a student who had asked to read it. The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Assn. of Boston called the book “anti-police, anti-law-and-order and anti-government” and demanded that every copy be removed from the public library system. The Knights of Columbus condemned “The Inner City Mother Goose,” stating: “This book is obscene and degrading in that it glorifies the decadence in our society, emphasizing prejudice and bigotry. Continued exposure of this type of material to students will cause them to become cynical and frustrate the workings of a Christian community.”

Personally, I am troubled by the workings of any community, Christian or otherwise, that continues to live comfortably snug and smug while unemployment, gangs and rats flourish a few miles down the freeway.

“Rub-a-dub-dub, Ceiling’s in the tub; And how do you think it got there? Water in the tub, On the floor above; And that’s how our ceiling got there.” The 1996 edition of “The Inner City Mother Goose” may indeed unsettle readers, especially with the inclusion of David Diaz’s vibrant illustrations. That’s the point. Books should make us uncomfortable with the way things are and occasionally inspire us to make them better. One of my favorite writing assignments is to ask students to describe the pleasure and disquietude that a particular book has caused them. As they write, students discover how the novels they like best often are those that have disturbed them in some fundamental way. Pundits who think of education as indoctrination might object, but I believe that learning is about opening children’s minds, not shaping them.

Occasionally I find myself weaving long self-serving stories in my head about the unfairness of life. Poor me, I work so hard and still drive a beat-up, 14-year-old car. I wax poetic on the injustice of my plight, oblivious to the fact that many people in this city work just as hard at jobs much less rewarding than mine and can’t afford a car at all. Reading Merriam jars me from such solipsism. “There is an old woman who lives by herself, With advertised pet food high on her shelf: Meat-flavored, yum yum, for your kitten or pup, She opens a can and then eats it up.”

I am not so naive as to think that a modern day Mother Goose will correct what is wrong in our cities, but like the originals, she just may make us uncomfortable enough to work for a better tomorrow. “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the double lock will keep; May no brick through the window break, And no one rob me till I wake.”