So this is a post about a children’s nursery rhyme. The burning of Protestants by “Bloody” Queen Mary (d. 1588) made a mark on the English, and some of this legacy still lingers today in the children’s nursery rhyme “Three Blind Mice.” Many folklorists believe the tune’s reference to a wife was actually code for the anti-Protestant queen. The three mice have been interpreted to mean three Protestant clergy whom Mary had executed by first blinding and then burning them at the stake. The song was recorded in writing in 1609 by English musician and compiler of folk songs Thomas Ravenscroft, and the words were originally quite different: “Three Blinde Mice,/ Three Blinde Mice,/ Dame Iulian,/ Dame Iulian,/ the Miller and his merry olde Wife,/ she scrape her tripe like thou the knife . . .” Whatever meaning might be inferred, this old song reminds us that the normalization of violence was _de rigueur_ for all age groups at the time.
