WE should all make an effort to protect our children from mindless violence.
I am not referring to those rather unpleasant videos where ordinary folk insist on carving each other up with chain saws for entertainment.
I am not even referring to video games where children press buttons and street fighters bravely kick each other in the jaw or engage in bouts of, machine gun serial killing before breakfast.
These honest diversions provide the pre pubescent with hours of good clean harmless fun and I have heard it said by experts that computer games improve alertness.
Incidentally, it is comforting to know that the modern child is more alert due to this familiarity with video games. Having a son or daughter at large around the house is now probably one of the most effective security precautions one can take using the martial arts learnt watching a show such as Power Rangers or by playing Streetfighter 9, the average infant will furnish the householder with moderately priced 24 hour protection burglars and other unwelcome intruders such as door to door salesmen are fly kicked in the groin and thrown out the window on to the street!
Mindful Violence?
The mindless violence (is there such a thing as mindful violence?) that concerns me, and has me lying awake in a cold sweat through the night and the morning, comes in the sinister form of the nursery rhyme. Nursery rhymes are sold openly on the shelves to children and, as far I can see, nobody, least of all the gardai, is taking measures to stop them.
I am told that the censors spend most of their time leafing through saucy Swedish spanking journals or watching films of a lewd nature in darkened rooms. I would be the last person to deny these worthy public servants their hours of pleasure, but it is high time that the protectors of the nation's morals turned their attention to the violent and grotesque verses which are targeted at the under eights.
The average video nasty can not hold a blood spattered candle to these odious bits of doggerel, where ritual violence animal cruelty and child abuse seem to be the norm.
While it is assumed that the average video is always nasty and will bring about the end of our civilisation by the end of the year, the nursery rhyme is considered to be a repository of wisdom matched only by the Bible and Mrs Beaton's cookery book.
Treasure Trove Verses such as Wee Willie Winkie and Goosey Goosey Gander are supposed to be part, of a treasure trove of Western culture which is to be handed down from generation to generation like Shakespeare, Mozart and Noddy.
We are told that children will be culturally impoverished and grow up to be illiterate if they cannot recite the following
Ladybird, Ladybird,
Fly away home,
Your house is on fire,
Your children will burn.
A charming collection of nursery rhymes published by the Oxford University Press was recently presented to my own infant and I have been busy vetting it for mindless violence and acts of gratuitous cruelty.
The volume contained such time honoured classics as The Old Woman Who Lived in A Shoe. I had quite forgotten this wholesome lyric. According to the rhyme, this particular old woman had a problem that seemed to be prevalent before the days of the easily available condom "She had so many children, she didn't know what to do.
Rather than contact adoption agencies or encourage her partner to have a vasectomy, the strangely fertile old lady opted for child care techniques that seem to be fashionable in certain parts of China
She gave them some broth
Without any bread
And whipped them all soundly
Then sent them to bed
Now, how about that for a heart warming tale to recite to your toddler before he nods off in the evening. Here we have an example of the rich imagery that is so painfully lacking in the modern video. It may have, become unfashionable in some circles to give children a good beating every time they talk out of turn, but the average nursery rhyme harks back to the days, when children were thumped and not heard.
I am afraid I have had to make several cuts to Little Polly Flinders, the rhyme about a young girl who commits the offence of sitting among the cinders. Polly's mother seems to have taken the same approach to law and order as the aforementioned delectable old woman. Mrs Flinders was angry that Polly spoilt her "nice new, clothes." Penalty another damn good whipping.
Punishment Lobby
A third parent makes it a hat trick for the corporal punishment lobby in that popular tale, of child exploitation and watering, Jack and Jill. In the full, unexpurgated version of this rhyme, after the unfortunate Jack falls down and breaks his crown, the concerned parent takes the whip to Jill "for laughing at Jack's disaster". That will teach her, I am sure.
After ensuring that these nursery nasties are seized at all ports of entry, or at least given, an X certificate, the censors should then turn their attention to that blood curdling ditty, Three Blind Mice. Upon reading my son's book of less than edifying verses, it occurred to me that the three visually impaired rodents were doing nothing more boisterous than chasing a farmer's spouse.
The punishment for that little jape savage mutilation with a cutting implement.
Georgie Porgie, of Pudding and Pie fame, would appear to be a budding sex pest. As for Goosey Goosey Gander, he is not only a stalker who wanders into a woman's chamber uninvited, but he is also involved in a pogrom against agnostics. He meets an old man who has neglected to say his prayers and takes him by the left leg and throws him down the stairs.
With such routine acts of violence popping up everywhere, no wonder more and more discerning parents are hiding their books of nursery rhymes at the top of the cupboard and encouraging their offspring to watch Robokiller 4.