Poetry Friday--Happy Chinese New Year!

Welcome to the Year of the Horse!

At the library where I work, we have a copy of Chinese Mother Goose Rhymes, selected by Robert Wyndham, and illustrated by Ed Young. A note in the book lists, as a source, Chinese Mother Goose Rhymes, translated and illustrated by Isaac Taylor Headland of Peking University, Fleming H. Revell Company, copyright 1900. I headed to one of my favorite websites, Project Gutenberg, where I found a copy of the book.

Headland's introduction tells us that over 600 nursery rhymes had been gathered in China, and that undoubtedly there were many more. He wrote of the translations:

We have tried to reproduce the meaning of the original as nearly as possible; this has not always been an easy task. Let it be understood that these rhymes make no pretentions to literary merit, nor has the translator made any attempt at regularity in the meter, because neither the original nor our own "Mother Goose" is regular. Our desire has been to make a translation which is fairly true to the original, and which will please English-speaking children. The child, not the critic, has always been kept in view.

Here's a typical rhyme:

Does it remind you are any English language nursery rhymes?

How about this one?

LADY-BUG

LADY-BUG, lady-bug,
Fly away, do,
Fly to the mountain,
And feed upon dew,
Feed upon dew
And sleep on a rug,
And then run away
Like a good little bug.

Or this?

THE MOUSE

He climbed up the candlestick,
The little mousey brown,
To steal and eat tallow,
And he couldn't get down.
He called for his grandma,
But his grandma was in town,
So he doubled up into a wheel
And rolled himself down.

This rhyme is accompanied by musical notation, but there is no indication whether the music is traditional (either Chinese or English tunes) or was written by Mr. Headland. Since I have no musical ability I can't even hazard a guess!

There are counting rhymes:

GRAB THE KNEE

One grab silver,
Two grabs gold,
Three, don't laugh
And you'll grow old.

And action rhymes:

PULLING THE SAW

We pull the big saw,
We push the big saw,
To saw up the wood,
To build us a house,
In order that baby
May have a good spouse.

Some of the rhymes, like the following, I hope are no longer recited in China:

OF WHAT USE IS A GIRL?

We keep a dog to watch the house,
A pig is useful, too;
We keep a cat to catch a mouse,
But what can we do
With a girl like you?

Even if spoken in a playful, teasing manner, I fear that hearing such a rhyme over and over again would have some negative effects on a girl's self-esteem. I am not one to judge another cultural group, especially when I live in a country where there seems to be a pervasive culture of rape, and another of bullying. These however, are rants for another time! For today, let's celebrate the good things that are found in all cultures--children, love, laughter, and rhymes! And, let's visit The Miss Rumphius Effect for this week's Round-Up!