Rock a Bye Baby: "Rock a bye baby, on the tree top. When the wind blows, the cradle will rock. When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall. And down will come baby, cradle and all." Seriously, look at it. It's a song about a baby falling off a tree, although there are alternative theories about this being a "dandling song" sung whilst the baby is being tossed in the air or that it portrays the baby's nightmare whilst being rocked in its sleep.
Likewise, the German nursery rhyme Hoppe Hoppe Reiter, which loosely translates to "Hop hop goes the rider, when he falls he screams. If he falls in the ditch he'll be eaten by ravens, and if he falls in the swamp he'll go splash." Other versions translate ditch as grave, and add a couple lines about being bitten all over by mosquitoes. This is a song that's used to entertain children. Oh, those cheerful Germans. The rhyme accompanies a game with a small child as the rider and the parent's knees moving up and down as the horse. At the end, the knees move apart, but the parent prevents an actual fall.
Waltzing Matilda does this pretty bloody well. It's a song that every Australian is taught as a child, and therefor in every Australian's life there is that little Oh Crap moment too when they first fully appreciate the lyrics...
The children's song "Ring Around the Rosie" is actually about the millions and millions of people dying during the Black Plague. The posies were lain as burial flowers, and then the bodies of all those who "fell down" were burned into "ashes."
Most folklorists believe this is incorrect, the apparent plague references are absent in the oldest versions of the song which is itself not very old, the first published versions date to the 1880s with some references to it from the 1850s.
