Celie was trying to sing “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and couldn’t remember all the words. I couldn’t either, so I found a couple video versions of it on Youtube. I left for 5 minutes and came back to find C&I watching Pokemon cartoon footage of creatures hitting one another in the face to a soundtrack of Akon’s “Smack That.” I’m sure they couldn’t make out any of the lyrics, at least (one sample: “The way she climbs up and down them poles/ Looking like one of them putty-cat dolls”).
Note to self: no unmonitored Youtube time allowed.
Mary had a little lamb its fleece was white as snow;
And everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go.
It followed her to school one day, which was against the rule;
It made the children laugh and play, to see a lamb at school.
And so the teacher turned it out, but still it lingered near,
And waited patiently about till Mary did appear.
“Why does the lamb love Mary so?” the eager children cry;
“Why, Mary loves the lamb, you know” the teacher did reply.
It’s an interesting fantasy of pure and total reciprocal love between child and animal. What’s the answer to why the lamb loves Mary? Just reverse the subject and object: Mary loves the lamb. The trip to school is a ritual of maturation and development away from infancy, but the lamb remains as a disruptive “lingering” remnant of the pure animal love of babyhood. I suppose the lamb is probably a Jesus type, too, which means the rhyme may be an allegory of the tension of spiritual faith in the rational schoolroom.
No strip-club pussy-cat dolls allowed at school, either.
By the way, the words to “Mary Had a Little Lamb” were apparently the first recorded by Edison on a tinfoil phonograph.
Ivan Kreilkamp 
Here’s a nice reference source for you (but it only works for the English nursery rhymes where the Mary ones are generally about Mary Queen of Scots):
http://www.vam.ac.uk/moc/childrens_lives/nursery_rhymes/index.html
There’s a really really rude version of Mary had a Little Lamb that my brother used to sing…but it’s far too rude to write here.
I’ve always enjoyed the [silly] version that goes something like this:
“Mary had a little lamb its fleece was white as snow;
And everywhere that Mary went, she threw it out the window!”
Crude? A little, but it gives us the ripest opportunity to teach our children early the word “defenestrate” 🙂
yes, more children should know that word!