Dr. Fox: Aw! That's pretty cute.
Unikitty: No, no, no! In this context, it's super creepy.
For added atmosphere, play the music from this track
while reading on.
A Nursery Rhyme used to convey an underlying sadness and/or creepiness, sometimes made into a theme tune that sounds like a music box that's slightly off key. It's mainly used to indicate someone with a Squicky past, a child molester or other psychosis. Ironically, due to this trope, it's very uncommon for anyone to use nursery music to indicate anything positive anymore, making it a common theme of Grimmification.
Occasionally the writers want to be more poetic with it, and a character will sing the lyrics to some bedtime song. This is sometimes handwaved as being learned from a nanny or grandmother, since they tend to be rhymes no one has used in the last century.
"Ring-a-Ring-of-Roses" (or "Ring Around the Rosey", as it's known in some parts of the world) is especially prone to this, due to the popular belief that a cute little children's song was written about the Black Death. While some disagree with this interpretation,
the lyrics of the earliest documented and best-known form do lend themselves undeniably to rather dark interpretations; enough that the Victorians started Bowdlerizing it with more lighthearted variants.
Old-time songs like "Singin' in the Rain" (seen in A Clockwork Orange) and the works of Frank Sinatra are quickly becoming part of this trope. If you enter an ancient, dilapidated mansion and a song whose original listeners are either senile or dead from old age plays over and over and over, you're in trouble. Also, the famous "Hush Little Baby" or "Mockingbird" lullaby seems to be the top icon of this trope, it's simple enough for parents (or some creepy unseen killer) to ad-lib further verses as required.
Overlaps with the Ominous Music Box Tune. Often goes with the Creepy Child, the Psychopathic Manchild and Ambiguous Innocence. See also Soundtrack Dissonance. The opposite, where the music box is used positively, is Nostalgic Music Box. Compare and contrast Fractured Fairy Tale. Compare Creepy Circus Music and Sinister Whistling. Compare and contrast Creepy Children Singing, where creepy songs and nursery rhymes are played in the background to add tension and fear to a scene. Zig-zagged by many a Playground Song, which genuinely come from children's oral tradition but often just are that dark. When used in advertising, see Moody Trailer Cover Song. May overlap with Self-Soothing Song.
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Examples:
- This
Australian road safety advertisement uses "Happy Christmas" to absolutely soul-crushing effect.
- An old Public Service Announcement started with a closeup of a black mother singing Mockingbird to her toddler... and the camera slowly panning back to reveal she is kneeling in the middle of the street where her baby had just been caught in the crossfire.
- This Scottish ad for Friends of the Earth
advocating for people to speak up regarding environmental issues uses "All Things Bright and Beautiful" — except it replaces "The Lord God made them all" with "Oh, God, we killed them all".
- There is a safety advertisement about overhead powerlines that used to be on the radio in Calgary, Alberta. It started out with the tune from Rock a Bye Baby, with the song slowing down and slowly becoming more sinister-sounding. It doesn't seem ironic, but considering that one of the ways you can come in contact (and one the ways they like to remind people about) is backing up while in a cherry picker, and the cherry picker can resemble a cradle in a way, and the lyrics for the end of the nursery rhyme are, "And down will come baby, cradle and all," well, it just brings up some fairly disturbing images.
- A campaign ad
put out by Barack Obama during the 2012 election takes his opponent (and later Utah Senator) Mitt Romney's rendition of "America the Beautiful" and turns it into this, altering the audio to give it a mournful quality and playing it over scenes of closed factories and ghost towns while attacking Romney's jobs record as head of Bain Capital.
Mitt Romney's not the solution. He's the problem. - This 2010 Canadian drug prevention PSA
includes an ominous, hollow girlish voice singing one of those to depict a girl's descent into drug addiction
One, two, kicked out of school
Three, four, snort some more
Five, six, need my fix
Seven, eight...feels too late... - This video
includes a German public service video involving classic horror characters singing "Brahm's Lullaby."
- A PIF (featured in the above video) had an instrumental version of "How Much Is That Doggy In the Window" playing as the announcer threatens to literally Shoot the Dog unless people donate money to the RSPCA.
- The German child advocacy group Kinderschutzbund made a series of radio PSA's that featured kids singing children's songs, but with the lyrics changed to be about child abuse.
- The Partnership for a Drug Free America did the exact same thing in a 2004 campaign to encourage parents to talk to their kids about drugs because they probably have already been exposed to them. There is a kid singing the ABC song, only instead of the alphabet, she is listing off drug acronyms.
ABCD PCP,
E or X and THC.
Special K and LSD,
J's and H and GHB.
Now I know my drugs you see.
Next time won't you sing with me? - This 1992 PIF from Community Hygiene Concern
. "There's a worm at the bottom of the garden," the worm in question being the Toxocara worm, which can cause blindness.
- Three radio PIFs from the NSPCC made in 2002 took nursery rhymes and reworte them to be about child abuse.
- When Georgie Porgie's dad hears that he has been making girls cry, he hits him, leading to Georgie being confused and unable to concentrate in school.
- Little Jack Horner's mum hits him for sticking his thumb in his pie instead of using a spoon. Jack, upset that he gets in trouble for doing that but not his baby brother, punches the baby.
- Polly gets shouted at by her father and hit with a spoon while putting the kettle on, making her wet herself.
- Friend sings one a few times in 20th Century Boys to taunt the heroes.
Friend: Kenji-kun, come and play with me.
- Amatsuki uses the ancient Japanese poem "Tooryanse", about either getting blessings for your child when it turns seven — first stanza — or burying it on its seventh birthday — second stanza, to incredibly creepy effect, sung by a choir of children in an eerie whisper and accompanied only by the occasional ringing of a bell. Now remember that the Yakou has a bell. Its sound drives people insane...
- Black Butler:
- During an arc in the anime, a serial killer named Drocel keeps grinding his organ and sings a very creepy version of "London Bridge is Falling Down". His prey is young, beautiful girls that he turns into living dolls; the song is used to control said dolls and determine what materials to construct them from. Despite being male, he's kind enough to make an exception for Ciel.
Drocel: Make it out of gold and silver, gold and silver, gold and silver. Make it out of gold and silver, my fair lady.
- In the manga, we have "Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son" — but only the first verse, over and over.
- During an arc in the anime, a serial killer named Drocel keeps grinding his organ and sings a very creepy version of "London Bridge is Falling Down". His prey is young, beautiful girls that he turns into living dolls; the song is used to control said dolls and determine what materials to construct them from. Despite being male, he's kind enough to make an exception for Ciel.
- Hansel and Gretel from Black Lagoon can be heard singing one of these while changing after "playing" with one of Balalaika's men until he died from it and then with his dead body, which still twitched every time they hammered nails into his head.
My mother has killed me
My father is eating me
My brothers and sisters sit under the table
Picking at my bones
They will bury them
Under the cold marble stones- This is likely inspired by the creepy folktale of "The Juniper Tree", in which the murder victim sings this ditty from beyond the grave:
It was my mother who murdered me
It was my father who ate me
It was my sister Marjorie
Who all my bones in pieces found
Them in a handkerchief she bound
And laid them under the juniper tree
Kywitt, kywitt, kywitt I cry;
Oh, what a beautiful bird am I!
- This is likely inspired by the creepy folktale of "The Juniper Tree", in which the murder victim sings this ditty from beyond the grave:
- Case Closed: The leader of the Black Organization uses a popular Japanese children's song written by Noguchi Ujō — titled "Nanatsu no Ko" (七つの子, lit. "Seven Children" or "Child of Seven") — to encode his/her phone number.
- Many chapters of Count Cain are inspired by Mother Goose rhymes, even some of those that were an integral part of the larger arc. Based on Agatha Christie's technique, these chapters usually start with the nursery rhyme, which gradually turns out to frame a ghastly crime.
- Not quite this, but in Darker than Black, one Contractor, Mai, was formerly a normal schoolgirl, and after she uses her powers, she has the Renumeration of whistling. Said powers involve Kill It with Fire, and she whistles a dissonant melody as her victims scream in agony.
- Deadman Wonderland features the Lullaby, a sad and disturbing song about a cursed woodpecker. As revealed later, the song acts to calm the Wretched Egg, allowing her to exist as Shiro. When she and Ganta were children, they would often sing the song together while Ganta's mother played the tune and cried.
- One episode of Death Note has Misa taking over the role of Kira and singing a nursery song in the "I'm watching you" vein while occasionally killing those around her.
- The Road's Song from D.Gray-Man — both Japanese
and English
are deliciously creepy.
- Elfen Lied has tunes like "Neji", "Yureai", and "Uso Sora", among others. Some of which are played during the flashbacks of Lucy's terrible childhood.
- Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex:
- The Tachikomas sing a children's song as they're being packed up and sent to the laboratory for formatting and disassembly. They think it's a happy song and tell Batou as much. Problem is, the song is actually "Dona, Dona", a horrific Yiddish song written in 1941, about a calf being taken to slaughter and told to accept his fate without crying.note It was also implied that, to the Tachikomas, death was an exciting adventure that they were looking forward to, especially because to experience death was something reserved for those with ghosts. It can be interpreted as the Tachikomas slinging some guilt on Batou for letting it happen. Just previously Batou had deceived them by pretending that everything was OK, when he knew about their impending fate, and their farewells were rather sharp and subdued compared to their usually cheerful personality. Considering their earlier worries, they weren't eager to die.
- In one episode, an insane serial killer skins women alive and sells their recorded experiences as snuff films at a flea market, all while humming "Mary Had a Little Lamb".
- Hellsing courts this trope in the episode with the two vampire serial killers when there were scenes of the aftermath of a horrific, gruesome murder of a family is shown with a happy television show tune is playing in the background.
- In a rare example Played for Laughs, England from Hetalia: Axis Powers sings the lyrics "Flare up and burn it down/ from corner to corner with that hellfire/ don't leave a single trace/ burn down even their souls" to the tune of Georges Bizet's L'Arlésienne Suite No. 2
... as a campfire song while roasting marshmallows. America screams that it sounds like he's trying to summon the Devil.
- In the anime of Inuyasha, Kagome's name is implied to have been derived from the old Japanese game "Kagome, Kagome" in which the players form a ring with a person in the middle with his or her eyes closed, then move in a circle around him or her, singing, and stop once the song is finished. The person in the middle then tries to guess who is standing behind them now. Although the song is very cryptic and has several interpretations
, Kagome ultimately discovers Naraku behind the possessed priestess in this episode and shoots him.
- Judas uses this traditional prayer to creepy effect: "Now I lay me down to sleep/I pray the Lord my soul to keep/And if I die before I wake/I pray the Lord my soul to take."
- The "Uwasa" (lit. "Rumour") song from the Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story anime. Its lyrics and melody are composed to invoke children's counting folk songs that would be very at home in Japanese Horror. It also foreshadows the appearance of a new enemy called Rumours. Bonus points for being sung by a baby variant of Kyubey.
- Alyssa from My-HiME sings one of these in English early on in the anime.
Who are those little girls in pain just trapped in castle of dark side of moon
Twelve of them shining bright in vain like flowers that blossom just once in years?
They're dancing in the shadow like whispers of love just dreaming of a place where they're free as doves
They've never been allowed to love in this cursed cage
It's only the fairy tale they believe - Noir:
- The first thirty-odd seconds of Melodie are of the music box variety. The song then swells into a more rock-ish theme with the music box chimes heard heavily in the background.
- Chloe's theme, Secret Game is of the rhyme variant.
- In one chapter of One Piece as the battle of the World Government and Whitebeard draws close and reactions of people around the world are shown, small children on the Grand Line sing a nursery rhyme-style song about how fearsome Whitebeard is as they play and the woman watching them comments that even they know what's going on.
- Episode 7 of the anime of Psychic Detective Yakumo opens with the young Miyuki Nanase singing another version of "London Bridge is Falling down" while drawing on the ground with a piece of chalk a girl eating three people, which goes like this:
Take a key and lock her up
Lock her up
Lock her up
Take a key and lock her up
My fair lady. - One of Kafuka's Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant moments in Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei involves her singing an extraordinarily creepy nursery tune which she seems to think is a cheerful song.
- Margery Daw from Shakugan no Shana was also named after one of these; in fact, her spells use rather obscure and creepy ones as incantations.
- The Unforgiving Flowers Blossom in the Dead of Night has the protagonist's teacher strangling her while singing Aogeba Tōtoshi, a song sung at graduation ceremonies in Japan.
- Big Finish Doctor Who: That creepy Zagreus rhyme in the Eighth Doctor audio adventures, which turns into "extremely scary" when Zagreus possesses the Doctor. "Zagreus sits inside your head/Zagreus lives among the dead/Zagreus sees you in your bed/And eats you when you're sleeping." Sleep tight, Time Lord kids!
- Howie Mandel's version of "The Mockingbird Song" from his stand-up act takes a horrifying turn for the worse (for the bird, anyway) very early on.
- The DCU:
- When written by Jeph Loeb, the Batman villain Scarecrow frequently sings "The Mockingbird Song".
- The name of Solomon Grundy, Super Zombie of Green Lantern (1941) and onward, was based on a nursery rhyme of a man "born on a Monday" and "died on a Saturday."
- In Night of the Owls, the Court of Owls has an old nursery rhyme about them:
"The Court of Owls watches,
Watches all the time.
Ruling Gotham from a shadowed perch,
Behind granite and lime.
They see you at your hearth.
And they see you in your bed.
Speak not a whispered word about them...
...or they'll send The Talon for your head!"
- In The Invisibles, the demon Orlando leaves a recording of "Pop Goes the Weasel" playing in the house of a family he has butchered.
- Marvel Universe:
- In Thunderbolts #120, Norman Osborn finally goes completely insane, puts on his old Goblin costume and starts killing people. In between cackling and declaring that he's God, he joyfully sings John Barleycorn, a traditional folk/drinking song that personifies wheat and barley and describes the harvesting process in the most violent way possible. Though the song was originally meant to be disturbing, having the Green Goblin sing it during a massacre makes it even worse.
"They hired men with scythes so sharp to cut him off at the knee. Bound him about the waist and served him most barbarously."
- The previews for Way of X have an ironic nursery rhyme for Krakoa's bogeyman, the Patchwork Man:
"There is a man who's made of parts,
Of grafts and empty spaces.
He slinks beyond the sight of eyes,
And hunts in hidden places.
His dream will be undying!
The nightmare will not end!
The Patchwork Man is coming
And to his will you'll bend."
- In Thunderbolts #120, Norman Osborn finally goes completely insane, puts on his old Goblin costume and starts killing people. In between cackling and declaring that he's God, he joyfully sings John Barleycorn, a traditional folk/drinking song that personifies wheat and barley and describes the harvesting process in the most violent way possible. Though the song was originally meant to be disturbing, having the Green Goblin sing it during a massacre makes it even worse.
- A partial example with the use of the Guy Fawkes rhyme ("Remember, remember...") in V for Vendetta — while it is obviously dark in tone and based on real events, most modern British people don't stop to think about the lyrics, much like most nursery rhymes.
- Better Bones AU: The Clans make up one concerning Tigerstar's death that describes in gruesome detail all of the organs that fell out of his body, which serves to teach young cats the names of those organs.
- In Breaking Point, Medusa sings "All Through The Night" to five-year-old Crona while holding him gently to her. Sound like a Pet the Dog moment to you? You are wrong, my friend. This is Crona's worst memory, because it happens while Medusa is drunk on wine (and has made him drink some too), there's countless snakes crawling all over them, and she's rambling on about how she can't love and wants Crona to help her feel as if she can. It scares poor Crona so badly that he forces himself to forget it ever happened. Harmful to Minors, indeed.
- Calvin & Hobbes: The Series:
- A creepy ghost sings on.
"Oh we are very happy where we are.
We have many things to do.
This song is the result of very hard work
Listen to the song, from very far.
We have eyes and ears and toes.
We have quite a lot of foes
Beware us when we are mad.
For what will happen will be bad.
We have brothers, sisters, and Mothers.
We have also a many Fathers.
Oh we are very happy where we are.
We have many things to do.
This song is the result of very hard work
This has been the song, from very far." - Much later, a poltergeist girl sings "Ring Around the Rosey" while skipping around on a wall.
- A creepy ghost sings on.
- In this
Death Note fic, Near recalls one as part of his father's horrible abuse:
"Hush, little baby, don't make a sound
Just quiet your cries as Daddy throws you to the ground
Hush, little baby, don't make a move
Because Daddy isn't nearly through with you" - It's not uncommon for people to do creepy covers of Disney songs, which may not be nursery songs in the classical sense, but they are often tied to childhood innocence and these creepy covers tend to be lullaby-like orchestral or music box covers. A compilation of such covers can be found here
.
- Dragon Ball Z Abridged:
- Freeza sings his own version of "My Favorite Things":
"Peaceful young races with fire on their houses,
Millions of voices all silenced like mouses,
Watching the cowards bow to their new king,
These are a few of my favorite things..." - Later on, Imperfect Cell is introduced creepily singing "Mr. Sandman". Makes sense, since he was partly made from Freeza's DNA.
- Freeza sings his own version of "My Favorite Things":
- Dragon Lily
has a disturbing childhood song from Bellatrix.
Lady Death, Lady Death,
Catch me while I still draw breath! - In "The Ember Island Lighthouse"
, the Fire Nation has some screwed up kids' songs, as demonstrated by the young Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee. (Azula explains that the song is about a past Fire Lord who crushed a rebellion in the Outer Islands of the nation, killed the rebels when they surrendered, left the bodies lying on the beaches, and then burned down all their hometowns for good measure.)
All the sons and daughters
Left lying in the waters
Ashes, ashes
We all rise up! - In chapter 75 of Gensokyo 20XXV, we have a poltergeist of Yukari's memories singing "Kagome, Kagome", the Japanese equivalent, with some of the verses being changed, translating to,
Caged bird, caged bird
When will I come out
In the night of dawn
The crane and turtle slipped
I know who stands behind! - The voiced-over Dragon Ball Z short Gohan's a BLUEY Fan?
by MasakoX has Super-Saiyan 2 Gohan singing his own rendition of "Poor Little Bug on a Wall" from Bluey as he marches towards Cell, while the villain is begging him not to get closer as Gohan sings how there's "no one to clean up the mess."
- The Soul Eater fanfic "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle"
starts off perfectly innocent, with Marie singing a lullaby to her and Stein's baby son. But it turns into this trope when it's revealed that the singer is not Marie, but Medusa. She's kidnapped the child and intends to raise him as a Tykebomb to succeed where Crona failed. Oh, Crap!.
Hush, little baby, quiet now, Mama's going to hold you safe and sound
Hush, little baby, don't make a move, your Mama'd move heaven and earth for you
Hush, little baby, don't you cry, you're the most precious thing in Daddy's life
Hush, little baby, you'll never know, how Daddy loves you with all his soul
Hush, little baby, don't you fear, Mama's always going to be right here
Hush, little baby, my precious one, I know you'll be your father's son
Hush, little baby, soon you'll know, Mama's never going to let you go
Hush, little baby, here you'll stay, because Daddy couldn't keep his demon away. - In Hard Being Pure, Snatch, the villain specializing in theft, comes check on Noa while she's confined to her magic circle and finds her signing "Who killed Cock Robin", ending with the Sparrow in the song being hung like a thief.
- In Harry Crow
, a pregnant Bellatrix Lestrange sings nursery rhymes while cutting strips of skin off Edmund Parkinson.
- In Harry Potter and the Prince of Slytherin
Bellatrix Lestrange sings a rather disturbing little ditty while in Azkaban.
Dead Muggle, dead Muggle, swinging in a tree
How many dead Muggles do you see?
Tongues turned blue and faces gone grey
Watch them all as they twist and sway! - Heir of the Nightmare: Nightmare Moon sings "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" as she dementedly and viciously chases after her daughter Twilight.
"Twinkle, Twinkle, little star. How I wonder where you are. Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky. Twinkle, Twinkle, little star. How I wonder where you are..."
- In Holidays with Holmes, Holmes comes up with his own twist on the traditional Guy Fawkes rhyme after a convicted murderer tries to kill him and Watson on that night.
- The fan fiction "Hush Little Baby"
is a continuation of the song sung by Harley Quinn in Batman: Arkham City.
- "Hypno's Lullaby"
is a well-known Pokémon Creepypasta poem in this form.
- A Mighty Demon Slayer Grooms Some Ponies has Megan singing the old My Little Pony theme song as part of her Heroic BSoD after she is forced to kill one of the ponies, who has turned villainous.
- Of The Earthling Saiyan:
- The Retaliation of The Earthling Saiyan: After sending all of the Saiyans flying with one of his attacks, Frieza sings an altered version of "Where, Oh Where, Has My Little Dog Gone?" while looking for Raditz.
Oh where, oh where could has the little monkey gone~? Oh where, or where could be be? With his tail cut short and his hair so long, oh where, oh where could he be~?
- The Forgotten Past of The Earthling Saiyan:
- On multiple occasions, Kakarot sings a variation of "London Bridge is Falling Down" with the lyrics changed to be about himself and how he's a danger to the humans.
- Chi-Chi has a dream where Kakarot kills several people while singing a version of "Five Little Monkeys" with the lyrics changed to be about killing.
- In another of Chi-Chi's dreams, Kakarot sings a variation of "Pop Goes the Weasel" with the lyrics changed to be about killing people while the two of them are surrounded by dead bodies.
- The Retaliation of The Earthling Saiyan: After sending all of the Saiyans flying with one of his attacks, Frieza sings an altered version of "Where, Oh Where, Has My Little Dog Gone?" while looking for Raditz.
- The My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic Dark Fic "Pattycakes 2"
has in the "bad" ending
sung from Fluttershy to a permanently regressed Rainbow Dash and Scootaloo. Try singing it to the tune of Want You Gone
from Portal 2. Here is the last verse.
You'll have the mind of a baby
That's what I'm counting on
You're [sic] never hurt anyone else
Now that your mind is gone
Now you are at age one
Now our little game is done - A Touhou Project fan remix, "Sweets Time Midnight"
, sets Flandre Scarlet's famous leitmotif to a nursery rhyme. The lyrics
don't make a lot of sense when read literally, but a little imagination about the "dolls" or food being mentioned turns the whole song into Nightmare Fuel.
- AKIRA: The movie has the jingling toy bells and squeaking as the killer toys attack.
- In the flashback in Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, Batman and Batgirl return to the condemned Arkham Asylum. As they walk through the dilapidated halls, they hear Harley Quinn singing "Hush, Little Baby". It only gets worse from there.
- In Batman: Under the Red Hood, the Joker sings a creepy version of "I'm a Little Teapot" while pouring gasoline on Black Mask, his secretary, and Red Hood/Jason Todd's gang (many of whom used to work for Black Mask) in the truck they're bound and gagged in.
Joker: I'm a little teapot. Short and stout. Here is my handle. Here is my spout.
- In Daffy Duck's Quackbusters, Daffy finds himself in a parody of The Exorcist, and the possessed Regan stand-in goes Jekyll & Hyde on a classic: "Mary had a little lamb... BUT I ATE IT!"
- DC Showcase – Batman: Death in the Family has another instance of this in the path in which Jason confronts the Joker as the Red Hood if the viewer chooses to spare the Joker. Here, the Joker recites a version of "Humpty Dumpty" to mock the deterioration of Jason's sanity after Jason had learned that he had violated Batman's no-kill policy and repressed his memories of doing so, resulting in the Bat-Family shunning him in spite of ultimately not going through with killing the Joker as Batman asked him to on his deathbed.
- Fantastic Mr. Fox: "Boggis, Bunce, and Bean: one fat, one short, one lean..." This is only a partial example of this trope as the song is actually sung by schoolchildren and is not used ironically. Mr. Badger even invokes it in order to dissuade Mr. Fox from buying a house next to said farmers.
- Near the end of Finding Nemo, Darla can be heard singing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" out loud while tapping on the aquarium's glass wall where Peach the starfish is hanging onto.
Peach: Find a happy place! Find a happy place!
- Discussed in Frozen II, as Elsa and Honeymaren recall the lyrics to "All Is Found", a Northuldran lullaby that Queen Iduna once sang to Elsa and Anna:
Elsa: Dive down deep into her sound... [Honeymaren joins her] But not too far or you'll be drowned...
Honeymaren: Why do lullabies always have to have some terrible warning in them?
Elsa: I wonder that all the time. - A scene in Ice Age: The Meltdown has the main characters encounter some vultures who start singing "Food, Glorious Food" from Oliver!. It's more silly than creepy.
- The Nightmare Before Christmas features the three musicians (one of whom is Greg Proops) playing an off-key, really creepy version of "Jingle Bells." However, since this is Halloween Town, where everything is supposed to be scary and creepy, Jack Skellington congratulates them instead of sending them off. Later, they give the same treatment to "Here Comes Santa Claus".
- In Open Season, a hunter that barely seems competent during other scenes suddenly appears very menacing when quietly singing "Teddy Bears' Picnic" as he stalks the protagonist, a domesticated bear who'd been released into the wild and snuck into the cabin not knowing who the owner was. That the bear's former owner had used this song as a lullabye earlier in the film doesn't help.
- In The Rescuers Down Under, Percival McLeach's version of "Home on the Range" counts:
Home, home on the range
Where them critters are tied up in chains
I cut through their sides
And tear off their hides
And the next day I do it again!
Everybody! - In Sailor Moon SuperS: The Movie, the villains use a cheerful song called Three O'Clock Fairy to hypnotize children.
- Shrek 1:
- Lord Farquaad taunts the Gingerbread man by holding his missing legs and saying "Run run run as fast as you can, you can't catch me I'm the gingerbread man!".
- There's also a parody of "It's a Small World" in the Duloc welcome box that combines this with Lyrical Dissonance. It uses the cheery tune and smiling characters, but is actually giving quite a few clues as to how rigid and dystopian Duloc has become. In the Halloween special ''Scared Shrekless' there is a Halloween variation of it.
- In Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, the Big Bad Kingpin enters by singing a few bars of the old Spider-Man theme song, while the superhero himself is pinned down by minions and at his mercy.
"Watch out! Here comes the Spider-Man."
In general:
- Experimental Industrial and Neofolk groups adore this trope. See Current 93's "All the Pretty Little Horses
" and Death in June's "Rocking Horse Night". Current 93 also did "Hey Ho the Noddy Oh", a thoroughly disturbing little song putting Rape as Drama to a tune reminiscent of "The Farmer in the Dell".
- In what could be described as an inversion of this, you can find lullaby versions of some pretty dark songs on YouTube or through the Rockabye Baby! albums (which compile lullaby versions of a single artist's songs). They have no lyrics, but that doesn't make them any less creepy. Some of them include Panic! at the Disco's "I Write Sins, Not Tragedies", System of a Down's "Chop Suey", and Imagine Dragons' "Radioactive".
Specific artists:
- 2 Live Crew's notoriously raunchy "Me So Horny" interpolates "Georgie Porgie" during its third verse.
I'm just like that man they call Georgie Puddin' Pie
I f*** all the girls and I make them cry - Alice Cooper's "Wind-Up Toy" uses the broken music box by itself to introduce the song's themes of childishness and madness/horror.
- Amanda Palmer:
- Naturally, Palmer and/or the Dresden Dolls love this trope, or variations thereupon. In the album No, Virginia, a song includes this verse:
Counting sheep
I lay me down to sleep
But I see
A sheep that will not leave
From the back
They catch him in a trap
Hit his head
and send him off to bed. - And who could forget "Missed Me"? It's a song about a young woman/little girl who badgers and badgers an older man for a kiss and gets him thrown into prison for it... which starts out, "Missed me, missed me, now you've gotta kiss me" and continues in that style.
- Naturally, Palmer and/or the Dresden Dolls love this trope, or variations thereupon. In the album No, Virginia, a song includes this verse:
- German punk rock band Die Ärzte has a song called "Schlaflied" ("Lullaby"). Starting in the style of a typical lullaby, the first verse is very innocently telling the child to go to sleep. The second verse mentions the monster in the closet. The remainder of the song goes on in graphic detail about how that monster will kill and eat the child. The song is also a Bolero, as distorted guitars and creepy sound effects are added to the initial music box theme. The last verse goes back to the original instruments and tells the child to fall asleep quickly, or else the monster can't come in.
- Ayria's "Hunger" quotes the children's rhyme "Star Light, Star Bright":
On these stars I'll make a wish
A million words, a million fists
I wish I may, I wish I might
Devour it all in one bite - Bauhaus has their incredibly melancholic and nonsensical waltz, "The Three Shadows, Part II", which Peter Murphy described years later as being based around nursery rhymes. The song sounds more like a sermon given to unfaithful followers as a threat more than something one might play for their children.
But I will always exist
Because I always exist
Damn good, too
The rat race begins
The fat face stings
I hold the fresh, pink baby with a smile
I slice off those rosy cheeks, because I feel so thirsty
And Oedipus Rex complexes
Riddle my closed, bloated breast - The Blue Öyster Cult album Secret Treaties is punctuated by snatches of sinister-sounding musical-box theme. The jolly, innocent-sounding link pieces prededing and following the keynote song Astronomy are probably the most sinister of all, although the one associated with Caegey Cretins (about a columbine-style school pupil on the verge of going postal) and Dominance and Submission (which could be about the pedophilic violation of a young boy) are almost as creepy.
- The song "Mr. Ouija" by the rap group Bone Thugs-N-Harmony has the group chanting a nursery rhyme like tune asking the Ouija board to tell them their future, and asking it will they die of murder, a bloody murder. All the while distorted demonic vocals are heard in the background.
- The Boondox's song 'Seven', about a serial killer, has the chorus run as such:
A tisket, a tasket
The Scarecrow's out his casket
Turn out the light and lock the doors
Praying that he passes - "Mary Mary, Quite Contrary" from Can's "Monster Movie" is a slow-moving Epic Rocking tune based on the traditional nursery rhyme, but gradually gets more melancholic as the melody goes on.
- Neo-Progressive Rock band Citizen Cain's song "Harmless Criminal", which is about childhood fears, begins:
I know an old woman who swallowed a fly
I don't know why she wanted to die; so do I - Several songs from Color Theory's superstition-themed Concept Album Lucky Ago incorporate nursery/playground-style rhymes, notably "Avian"("One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy..."), "Phobiac"("Thirteen steps up the gallows stairs, the thirteenth guest will die in the year..."), and "Sniper"("Soldier lights his cigarette, sniper spots a mortal threat...").
- Counting Crows use this a few times, first in the song A Murder Of One with the "one for sorrow, two for joy" rhyme used in a song about an abusive partner, and then later in I'm Not Sleeping we get "I said rain rain go away\ Come again some other day,\ Cause I got all this shit to say\ But I've gone back to find my way", which is very powerful in context.
- One for nerdcore: the hook of Dan Bull's Assassin's Creed: Unity rap is a word-for-word dark rendition of the popular French children's song "Alouette".
- Decoded Feedback:
- "Death Control" has a Creepy Child singing "Ring Around the Rosies" in the intro.
- The Grief Song "Another Loss" begins with the lyric "You were my sunshine when skies were gray".
- Dream Theater have a song called Lie which plays with this trope.
Mother Mary, quite contrary
Kissed the boys and made them wary,
Things are getting just a little bit scary
It's a wonder I can still breathe - To quote The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster's song "Puppy Dog Snails"...
What do we do with a puppy dog's tail?
What do we do with a bucket of snails?
What do we do with a boy like you?
We put them in a pot and we throw them on the fire! - Emilie Autumn's "Miss Lucy Had Some Leeches" is a morbid parody of the children's rhyme "Miss Susie Had a Steamboat" about an asylum in the 1840s, complete with clapping.
Miss Lucy had some leeches
Her leeches liked to suck
And when they drank up all her blood she didn't give a—
Funny when the doctors had locked her in her cell
Miss Lucy screamed all night that they should go to bloody—
Hello to the surgeon [...] - Emilie Simon's "Ice Girl" uses a music box-like sound to both invoke the sound of ice and a creepy fairytale sound.
- Eminem:
- Eminem's partial cover/sampling of "Toy Soldiers" by Martika (below) uses the chorus to surprisingly effective melancholy effect.
- "Mockingbird", from the same CD as "Toy Soldiers" ("Encore"), was Eminem's own (slightly) twisted take on "Hush Little Baby".
- Eminem, going with his Subverted Kids' Show theme, also loved using nursery rhymes, chants and folk songs in many violent songs around 2003-6, such as in "Bully", "Monkey See Monkey Do", "Jimmy Crack Corn", "Evil Deeds", and so on. Although it's more rare in his later music, 2017's "Offended" is based around the ancient playground doggerel of "Nobody Likes Me, Everybody Hates Me, I Guess I'll Go Eat Worms", and 2020's "Little Engine" is based around chants from The Little Engine That Could.
- Evanescence's song "Lose Control" has this: "Mary had a lamb, his eyes black as coals. If we play very quiet, my lamb, Mary never has to know."
- Genesis (Band):
- The song "The Musical Box" is a ghost story about a dead child whose ghost is summoned by his musical box. About halfway through, it quotes "Old King Cole". The album is called Nursery Cryme.
- Don't forget the nursery-rhyme bit at the end of the "Guaranteed Eternal Sanctuary Man" segment of "Supper's Ready".
- The Genitorturers end the song "Lecher Bitch" on a creepy version of "Ring Around the Rosie".
- George Clinton likes to take nursery rhymes and turn them into drug references, and it's all Played for Laughs instead of scary.
- For instance, Funkadelic's "Let's Take it to the Stage" from "Let's Take It To The Stage" offers us this warped take:
Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet snorting some THC
Along came a spider, slid down beside her
Said, "What's in the bag, bitch?" - And Parliament's "Sir Nose D'Voidoffunk" from "Funkentelechy Vs. the Placebo Syndrome" has:
Baa baa black sheep, have you any wool?
Yes sir, yes sir, a nickel-bag fullnote
- For instance, Funkadelic's "Let's Take it to the Stage" from "Let's Take It To The Stage" offers us this warped take:
- The Green Day song "Letterbomb" opens with a girl singing this:
Nobody likes you
Everyone left you
They're all off without you
Having fun. - Older Than Television: In the 3rd movement of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 1, Mahler represents the funeral of a huntsman by a creepy minor-key version of "Frère Jacques," starting in the double basses and then expanding to the entire orchestra.
- Heather Dale's song "Mordred's Lullaby." Morgause is crooning to her infant son about how she's going to shape his very soul to utterly loathe his father, all so he can die enacting her vengeance against him. Talk about your Evil Matriarchs...
- Hollywood Undead has, on "Dead Bite", "Good night, sleep tight, don't let the dead bite" sprinkled throughout the song, with the soon added "Wrap a wrap around your head and watch you as you take flight."
- Jonathan Coulton's aptly named song "Creepy Doll" uses this in its verses.
- The Kacey Musgraves song ''Merry Go Round" corrupts not one, but two nursery rhymes at once:
Jack and Jill went up the hill
Jack burned out on booze and pills
Mary had a little lamb
Mary just don't give a damn no more - Kerli:
- "Creep Show". Before the last chorus, she sings an Estonian children's song in a whispery voice.
- Same for "Tea Party", which includes part of "I'm a Little Teapot".
- Kevin MacLeod made this
version of "Pop Goes the Weasel" that gets creepier with each verse. Good luck watching a toddler play with a jack-in-the-box without fear ever again. By the way that is royalty free.
- Korn:
- Shoots And Ladders is a whole song about nursery rhymes, mentioning how many of them are not quite so innocent as they seem. And then goes into full-on creepy, weaving several rhymes into a rant. Korn singer Jonathan Davis used the example of the lyrics to "Ring Around the Rosie" being about the bubonic plague (which they weren't).
Nursery rhymes are said
Verses in my head
Into our childhood they're spoonfed
Hidden violence revealed
Darkness that seems real
Look at the pages that cause all this evil - Dead Bodies Everywhere features a creepy music box interspersed with the metal.
- Shoots And Ladders is a whole song about nursery rhymes, mentioning how many of them are not quite so innocent as they seem. And then goes into full-on creepy, weaving several rhymes into a rant. Korn singer Jonathan Davis used the example of the lyrics to "Ring Around the Rosie" being about the bubonic plague (which they weren't).
- After the death of Michael Brown at the hands of a police officer, Lauryn Hill — whose musical involvement was very little since The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill — surprised everyone by releasing a song called "Black Rage" on her Soundcloud page. The song takes the melody of "My Favorite Things" and repurposes it to be a Protest Song about what the black community has to go through all the time.
- Lordi's "Blood Red Sandman" uses the off-key music box and an eerie nursery rhyme couplet to add to the theme of the song's subject/singer as a sort of bogeyman.
- "Out Comes the Evil" by Lords of Acid starts off by repeating the chorus of "Pop Goes the Weasel" twice. As the music slowly ramps up, the verse becomes a bit more... adult ("Half a pound of heroin/half a pound of treacle/that's the way the story goes/out comes the evil") and the song goes into full industrial techno mode.
- Martika's song "Toy Soldiers" has this as its chorus.
Step by step, heart to heart
Left right left, we all fall down
Like toy soldiers
Beat by beat, torn apart
We never win, but the battle wages on
For toy soldiers... - Marilyn Manson's "Cryptorchid" is made up almost entirely of these.
Each time I make my mother cry an angel dies and falls from Heaven...
- The Mechanisms:
- Two in the Science Fiction Fairy Tale Free-for-All Rock Opera Once Upon a Time in Space. "King Cole" is a Villain Song about the album's version of King Cole as a ruthless Galactic Conqueror, and "Rose Red" starts with a traditional performance of the round, before switching to a much harder version of the same tune about Rose's life in Cole's army.
- The song "Alice", sets the Red Queen's segment about decapitating people to turn them into robot soldiers to the tune of "The Mending Song" from Bagpuss.
- Characteristic for Melanie Martinez' brand of creepiness:
- "Milk and Cookies" (from the Cry Baby album) has allusions to "1, 2, Buckle My Shoe" and "Ring Around the Rosie". Did we mention that this a Murder Ballad sung by the title character towards her kidnapper? The chorus lampshades this with the lyrics "'Sing you a lullaby where you die at the end".
1, 2, melatonin is coming for you
3, 4, baby won't you lock the door?
5, 6, I'm done with this
7, 8, it's getting late so close your eyes, sleep for days - The chorus of "Tag, you're it" describes the kidnapper pursuing Cry Baby and reffering to the chase as the titular game. The third verse puts a twist on Eenie meenie.
Eenie meenie miny mo
Get your lady by her toes
If she screams, don't let her go
- "Milk and Cookies" (from the Cry Baby album) has allusions to "1, 2, Buckle My Shoe" and "Ring Around the Rosie". Did we mention that this a Murder Ballad sung by the title character towards her kidnapper? The chorus lampshades this with the lyrics "'Sing you a lullaby where you die at the end".
- "Early in the Morning" by Conor Maynard, Kriss Kross Amsterdam and Shaggy sets Intercourse with You lyrics to the tune of "The Drunken Sailor".
- Metallica's "Enter Sandman" makes verbatim use of a common rhyme-ish prayer in the middle:
Now I lay me down to sleep
Pray the lord my soul to keep
If I die before I wake
Pray the lord my soul to take- It does so in a distinctly creepy way. Listen to the song. Directly after comes another rhymish segment, this one original and more overtly sinister:
Hush, little baby, don't say a word
And never mind that noise you heard
It's just the beast under your bed
In your closet, in your head- The prayer can take on a distinctly creepy tone all by itself if you think about it the wrong way — in Hogfather, Susan notes that it was taught to Twyla and Gawain by their previous governess and the impression she got was that it carried the rider that the second half was the preferred result. At the time it was played for laughs, but now think about a child saying it with the same intent.
- "Enter Sandman" was inspired by and actually samples Robert Schumann's "Der Sandmann" (itself from the German short story of the same name) which is just as creepy.
- It does so in a distinctly creepy way. Listen to the song. Directly after comes another rhymish segment, this one original and more overtly sinister:
- Miracle Musical's "The Mind Electric" is an unsettling Sanity Slippage Song which at one point references Jack and the Beanstalk.
Service of the fee, fi, fo fum...
- Singer/guitarist/songwriter Morten Veland (ex-Tristania, Sirenia) seems fond of using these and Ominous Latin Chanting together.
- Mylene Farmer has the song Chloe, which is performed in a light, sing-song-y voice like a child reciting a rhyme. The background music is creepy enough on its own, and the "la-la"s in the chorus don't help at all. Then you actually start paying attention to the lyrics instead of the overall tone and realize it's about a girl hitting her head and drowning in a stream.
- Nightwish (Band):
- "Dead Boy's Poem" is made creepy not so much for the fact that this little boy is talking so calmly about suicide and being forgotten but because he's begging to be forgotten so that he doesn't have to feel the pain of his broken heart anymore.
- "Scaretale" opens with a creepy chorus of children singing "Ring Around the Rosie" and later develops into Creepy Circus Music.
- Used in the Nine Inch Nails song Down in It
Rain, rain, go away
Come again some other day - Nox Arcana is fond of this trope:
- The band's debut album, Darklore Manor, contains a track entitled "Nursery Rhyme", in which a little girl recites a version of the archetypal bedtime prayer (cited below) but changes it to address the Sandman. Close listening reveals an accompanying grown woman's voice in the background.
- The aforementioned track is followed by one entitled "Music Box", in which the same little girl sings meaningless syllables over the melody.
- Carnival of Lost Souls includes the self-explanatory "Calliope", "Haunted Carousel", "Living Dolls", and "Pandora's Music Box". "Spellbound" is made to sound as though it is an old love song played on a phonograph, though its much longer reprise at the album's end is done in the style of heavy metal.
- Shadow of the Raven's "Annabel Lee" is played on a music box, though the result is more melancholy than scary. Given the album's source of inspiration, and the song's namesake in particular, that's probably done quite purposely. And for the record, reading the poem to the song is surrealistic, almost scary.
- Grimm Tales
makes use of this trope throughout. Strangely, there seems to be an unusual focus on dramatic orchestrations rather than music-box sounds.
- The album Gothic contains the gem "The House Beyond the Graveyard", sang by a Creepy Child.
- "Augen Auf" by the band Oomph takes phrases from the German version of "Hide-and-seek". "Augen Auf, Ich komme" can be translated as "Ready or not, here I come!"
- From the intro of "Eat the Children" by Otep:
Hush little baby, don't make a sound
Hush little baby, don't make a move
This is going to hurt me more than you - Paul McCartney: After the BBC refused to play his Protest Song "Give Ireland Back to the Irish", an irritated Paul set "Mary Had a Little Lamb" to music and actually released it as a single.
- Pink Martini's cover of "Que Sera, Sera", reportedly inspired by the Hitchcock classic The Man Who Knew Too Much, starts off very slowly with a waltzing chime reminiscent of the circus in the background. Combine with China Forbes singing softly about how the future is not ours to see, and it becomes like a chilling little music box that you wish someone would close, except that it's so enchanting... This version of the song was also used in Mary and Max.
- In Pirates of the Mississippi's "Feed Jake", the narrator reminisces on a childhood pet while concurrently observing societal stereotypes:
Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep
If I die before I wake
Feed Jake, he's been a good dog
My best friend right through it all
If I die before I wake, feed Jake - Queen's Seven Seas of Rhye is a surreal, apocalyptic A God Am I rant by Freddie Mercury including such lyrics as "I'll defy the laws of nature and come out alive/and then I'll get you." It ends by fading into a sample of the old music-hall tune "I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside".
- Rammstein:
- Ramstein has the song "Spieluhr" ("Music Box"), which is about a child who gets buried alive. The chorus includes Richard Kruspe's daughter singing a ghastly variant of the German nursery rhyme "Hoppe, Hoppe Reiter" (which is in parts somewhat creepy even in its normal form) through a vocoder.
- Let's not forget "Hilf Mir", and its original inspiration: "Die gar traurige Geschichte mit dem Feuerzeug". Refined scariness, and in a child's story book, too...
- Regina Spektor's "Mockingbird"
Hush little baby, here comes the Sandman
Papa's going to buy you a medical plan
And if that medical plan don't cover your ass
Papa's going to buy you a pregnancy test
And if that pregnancy test comes out positive
Then, girl, I don't know how the hell we're going to live
Maybe on your bright ideas - Rob Zombie, on the first Hellbilly Deluxe album, begins with a track called "Call of the Zombie" that certainly fits this trope.
And out of the Darkness the Zombie did call
True pain and suffering he brought to them all
Away went the children to hide in their beds
For fear that the devil would chop off their heads - The majority of Rose Berlin's song "Coraline" is creepy, which is fitting when you consider the book it's based on. Then there's the following:note
We are small, but we are many
We are many, we are small
But we were here before you were
So we will be here when you fall - The live version of the instrumental Rush (Band) song "La Villa Strangiato" from the album "Exit... Stage Left" featured Geddy Lee singing the lyrics to a Yiddish children's song during a very odd-sounding guitar solo.
- Sabrina Carpenter's music video for "Taste" opens with her singing a lullaby with a threatening end as she selects a weapon with which to murder her ex’s new fling (played by fellow ex-Disney kid Jenna Ortega), which foreshadows the (hilariously) violent plot of the video.
Rock-a-bye, baby, snug in your bed
Right now you are sleeping, and soon you'll be…
Dead. - Metalcore artist Scene Queen, whose lyrics are often very violent and sexual in nature, uses this in her songs "Pink Rover" and "Pretty in Pink" which parodies "Red Rover" and "London Bridge is Falling Down" respectively.
- Set It Off's "Wolf in Sheep's Clothing" has twisted parts of "Jack Be Nimble", "Baa Baa Black Sheep", "Jack and Jill", and a bit from "Jack and the Beanstalk":
Baa baa black sheep, have you any soul?
No sir, by the way, what the hell are morals?
Jack be nimble, Jack be quick
Jill's a little whore and her alibis are turning tricks - Simon & Garfunkel's "7 O'Clock News/Silent Night". It starts off as just Silent Night, then the news comes in, getting steadily louder until it drowns out the singing.
- Siouxsie and the Banshees' "Mother" on their 1979 Join Hands album. The eerily decelerating music box plays 'Oh Mein Papa' while the dual lyric details a love/hate relationship with the narrator's mother.
- "The Stomp Song" by Australian industrial band Snog is a dystopian children's hymn referencing Nineteen Eighty-Four, specifically O'Brien's line "imagine a boot stomping on a human face, forever", and using a variation of the tune from "The Old Gray Mare".
- The children's album Spin, Spider, Spin has a take on "Ring Around the Rosey" titled "The Little Bird is Dead", about a funeral for a bird.
- The use of "Camptown Races" in Squirrel Nut Zippers' "Ghost of Stephen Foster" seems intended solely to evoke this.
- Subway to Sally:
- "Abendlied" starts with the refrain played by a music box and seems at first like a nice lullaby, but it becomes clearer and clearer that the song is actually about a father molesting his daughter.
- One of their older songs, "Julia und die Räuber", starts with a little girl cheerfully singing "Blut, Blut - Räuber saufen Blut! Raub und Mord und Überfall ist gut! Hoch vom Galgen klingt es, hoch vom Galgen klingt es: Raub und Mord und Überfall ist gut! ("Blood, blood - Robbers drink blood! Robbery and Murder and Mugging is fine! [The song] resounds from the gallows, [the song] resounds from the gallows! Robbery and murder and mugging is fine!") Those are also alternate lyrics to a common canon ("Hey Ho! Spann den Wagen an").
- "A New Kind of Water", a song about the threat of nuclear war by the British post-punk group This Heat, incorporates lines from the English nursery rhyme "Two Little Dickie Birds".
- "Girl Land" from Free To Be... You And Me by Marlo Thomas and Friends begins and ends with the MC of the titular Amusement Park of Doom, played by Jack Cassidy, singing a Creepy Circus Music rendition of "Toyland".
- "When the Stars Begin to Fall" by Tomahawk goes from creepy crooning to disjointed yelping to... whispering "One for Sorrow"?
- Tom Lehrer:
- "MLF Lullaby", a Cold War Wiegenlied, from That Was the Year That Was. A sweet, pretty song about how you should rest easy and not worry about the fact that peace and the human race's continued existence depends on some really untrustworthy people.
- "The Old Dope Peddler", a parody of gentle music-box style songs about innocent neighborhood figures, from Songs by Tom Lehrer.
- Tom Waits:
- Closing Time features the song "Midnight Lullaby", which makes liberal, and ironic, use of "Song of Sixpence", but not to creepy effect. Just ironic as in "I'm lonely and impoverished." He uses this trope to more standardly nightmarish effect in "Everything You Can Think of Is True" and "Misery Is the River of the World", featured on Alice and Blood Money respectively. The latter album also provides the page quote in the form of "Lullaby".
- "On the Nickel" from Heartattack and Vine is another pseudo-lullaby, this one about little boys who don't do what they should and grow up to be skid row homeless.
- Zawazawa-P's Vocaloid song "Kakome, Kakome"
is a "Ring Around the Rosie"-like song about immortal children playing endlessly and the horrible way they died, based on the real-life children's game "Kagome, Kagome". The video doesn't help.
- "Weird Al" Yankovic's The Night Santa Went Crazy, an Ax-Crazy parody of The Night Before Christmas.
- "The Clapping Song", first recorded by Shirley Ellis in 1965 and covered by many since then, including Gary Glitter, The Belle Stars, and Icona Pop (as "Clap Snap"), incorporates a jump-rope rhyme ("Three, six nine, the goose drank wine...") with a not-so subtle allusion to a black man being lynched ("The line broke, the monkey got choked").
- Magic: The Gathering:
- The Phyrexian Hulk
has this wonderfully disturbing flavor text:
It doesn't think. It doesn't feel.
It doesn't laugh or cry.
All it does from dusk till dawn
Is make the soldiers die.— Onean children's rhyme - Another example is Infectious Host
:
"Lost man, dead man,
knocking on the door.
Cankerman, soreman,
knock no more."— Ravnican children's rhyme - Innistrad, a plane of darkness and haunting horrors, has quite a few.
- Shadows Over Innistrad adds one in the form of a children's prayer to the archangel Avacyn on Always Watching
, which in and of itself is a simple request for protection but takes on an ominous tone as the angels start going mad.
- The short story "His Eyes, All of Them
" focuses on the boogeyman Old Stickfingers and contains a handful of rhymes about how he carries off disobedient children and wears their skins.
- Shadows Over Innistrad adds one in the form of a children's prayer to the archangel Avacyn on Always Watching
- The Phyrexian Hulk
- Numenera: Trawls are predatory humanoids who remain slightly out of phase from reality, invisible except for some tempting treasure that they dangle to lure people into coming close enough to grab, drag out of phase alongside them, and eat. Their bestiary entry includes a short children's rhyme about "the Nowhere Man", who tries to snatch and grab children to eat unless they can stump him with a riddle and win back their freedom and a gift from his hoard.
Beware, beware the Nowhere Man,
For snatch and grab is his pretty plan.
Quick, tell a riddle and stump him true!
Elsewise he'll steal away with you. - Pathfinder:
- Part one of the Carrion Crown campaign, The Haunting of Harrowstone, has a skipping song listing the murderers who burned to death in the Harrowstone Prison fire and now haunt the ruin.
- There are three in the Rise of the Runelords Adventure path as well. One is about a murderous scarecrow that eats children, based on a scarecrow-like golem that a local cult of murderers has been using. The second is about a monster called an "Attic Whisperer", an undead creature that preys on children and their families, created when a neglected child dies and made up of the dead kid's spirit animating abandoned toys. And finally the last one is sung by Goblins about how they want to eat you. It's surprisingly catchy.
- In Blood Brothers, a group of children sing a song about Mrs. Lyons, a character who over time gets more and more paranoid.
High upon the hill the mad woman lives
Never ever eat the sweets she gives
Just throw them away and tell your dad
Because high upon the hill is a woman gone mad - The Mousetrap uses 'Three Blind Mice', variously sung, written, and played on a piano. The "blind mice" reference the motive for murder: three children abused to the point of death (one was killed) by their foster mother, a farmer's wife.
- "I Dreamed a Dance" from Next to Normal seems like a tune Diana would sing to her son (augmented by the music box tune in the background from the first item her husband ever gave her when she was pregnant). Yet, of course, said son is deceased, and she is singing of longing to be with him so much that she dreams of him every night. Oh, and this song does come right before he persuades her to attempt suicide to go with him to a "world where we can be free".
- "Mistress Mary, Quite Contrary" is sung by the ghosts several times throughout The Secret Garden.
- In Street Scene, two nurses are reading a tabloid feature about the double murder of Mrs. Maurrant and Sankey, and sing about it to calm a crying baby. The family-unfriendly Lyrical Dissonance continues in the second verse of this lullaby, which contains additional soothing thoughts about adultery, alcoholism and Domestic Abuse:
Your parents are a loving pair;
He smacks her face, she pulls his hair;
Their shrieks and curses fill the air.
She smashes plates, and he tears her clothes;
She lands a left right on his nose,
Until there's blood all over his mug!
Sleep, ladybug;
Sleep sweet and snug;
Sleep my lady bug-bug. - Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street:
- Tobias chants "Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man" in an eerie voice as he picks up Sweeney's razor and slits Sweeney's throat.
- Let's not forget Mrs. Lovett singing "Nothing's gonna hurt you" while hunting Tobias through the sewers in the film version.
- Many of the songs are disturbingly dissonant, like when Sweeney has a beautiful round of "Pretty Women" with the guy he plans to kill, or the cheerful song about how great the meat pies are. You know, those meat pies.
- The film may also contain an inversion: "Johanna", when sung in the movie, is a sweet and romantic song about love overcoming every obstacle. When heard on its own, the lyrics are very creepy.
- Plus, "A Little Priest" is what one might consider a... subversion? It's full of happy, cheerful, downright corny puns, but the actual subject of the song and the levity of the characters is actually what makes the scene funny.
- In Benjamin Britten's operatic version of The Turn of the Screw, the children are singing "Lavender's Blue," while the adults look on, unmoved by this show of innocence ("It is all a wicked lie"). This is mostly foreshadowing, as the plot hasn't gotten too creepy yet.
- In the London play of The Woman in Black, whenever Arthur Kipps goes into the abandoned nursery, the musical box will start playing Brahms Lullaby. Cue audience screaming and hugging of complete strangers.
- The Caretaker from Halloween Horror Nights is an avid user of this trope.
- In one commercial
for his debut year of 2002, he picks out which tool he'll use to dissect his victim alive with by using the "Eenie Meenie Minie Moe" method.
- In a second commercial
, he mockingly plays with the toes of his dead victims while doing the "This little piggy..." tune.
- In 2015, he would recite his own version of the "Hush Little Baby" rhyme right before subjecting his victim to said live dissection.
"Hush, little baby. Don't say a word. Daddy's gonna buy you a mockingbird. And if the mockingbird don't fly, daddy says it's time! To! Die!"
- In one commercial
- At Hangman's House of Horrors
in Texas, this trope is frequently invoked by actors playing clown or doll characters. One common tune is slowly repeating the first six notes of "Ring Around the Rosey" in a minor key.
- Like the film above, Disney's The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror has of one of the unfortunate guests sent to the Twilight Zone from the elevator sing a creepy rendition of "It's Raining, It's Pouring", likely a reference to the lightning from a storm being responsible for their accident.
- In Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor's Gambit, the victim of "A Turnabout Forsaken" is Rosie Ringer (known as Tsubasa Kagome in the Japanese version), a member of the Committee for Prosecutorial Excellence who was privately investigating the death of her boyfriend, a photojournalist called Alf Aldown (Ryuji Kamei in the Japanese version) that happened some years previous to the event of the game. Both Japanese names make reference to the Japanese children's game Kagome Kagome (see the Inuyasha example under Anime & Manga, as well as the Terranigma example above). To elaborate: "Tsubasa" means "wings" and her full name comes from the phrase "kago no naka no tori" (bird in a cage) and Ryuji's surname comes from "kame" (turtle). The song also serves as foreshadowing about the identity of the real culprit: the last part of the song reads "The crane and turtle slipped/Who is behind you now?" The answer? Excelsius Winner (Bansai Ichiyanagi in the Japanese version), the man responsible for both deaths.
- In Animamundi Dark Alchemist, Georik's little sister has a habit of singing. "Hot Cross Buns" wasn't so bad, it was in fact pretty cute. But "Baa Baa Black Sheep", "Lizzie Borden Took an Axe" and "Solomon Grundy" were creepy. Notably, Georik tells her to stop singing because it was disturbing him.
- In Spirit Hunter: NG, Kubitarou of Kintoki goes around singing a children's song about the sacred cedar tree of Kintoki. Given that Kubitarou is an axe-murdering spirit with a horrible, groaning voice, the effect is rather chilling.
- Alphabet ends with the Alphabet Song playing over the depressing finale: when all of the alphabet members, as children, drive F away after he's forced to spell "frick" by L and O, leading to him creating the punctuation crystals and hardening himself to become the Big Bad. The "next time won't you sing with me" part in particular plays after showing F is now completely alone, with the planet Z mourning his fate.
- How It Should Have Ended runs with the Avengers: Age of Ultron example in their send-up of the trailer. After "I've Got No Strings", Ultron goes on to sing "A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes", "A Whole New World", and "Hakuna Matata", with the Avengers being increasingly agitated. They become hysterical once he finishes with "Do You Want To Build a Snowman?". This goes on into The Stinger, in which Batman and Superman offer to team up with him against the Avengers. He answers with "You've Got a Friend in Me".
- Played for Laughs in the Strong Bad Email episode "licensed", in which Senor Cardgage sits alone in his sketchy day care singing "Where is Tompkins? Where is coleslaw? Here I am!"
- Captain SNES uses "Row, Row, Row your Boat" as the iconic tune associated with the Sovereign of Sorrow; the sprites refer to it as being like a funeral dirge about the futility of existence.
- This
Evil, Inc. comic makes use of a parody of "It's a Small Small World", which is originally seen as humorous. (Since this is an amusing comic, it stays humorous, but not to the characters.)
- This
Exterminatus Now comic has carolers singing snippets of twisted versions of Christmas carols (and in panel 2, "The Hokey Pokey") in the background. All of the lyrics are partially covered up by dialogue depending on the panel, but the other three songs are parodies of "Good King Wenceslas", "Silent Night", and "Deck the Halls".
- Parodied in this Medium Large
strip (second from the bottom).
- In Not a Villain, Bloody Mary recites twisted versions of nursery rhymes before attacking. She also slips nursery rhyme references of varying subtlety into her regular conversations whenever the opportunity presents itself.
- Roommates: The Scrible Person (a.k.a. Living Words a.k.a. Story) is literally made out of "Ring Around the Rosey", when it guides the spear, which kills the Champion in the Kings War arc.
- Scarlet Lady: Stormy Weather sings It's Raining, It's Pouring when going to confront Alec over rigging the weather girl contest.
"It's raining, it's pouring, the old man is snoring. He bumped his head when he went to bed, and he DIDN'T get up in the morning!"
- Sluggy Freelance has this
gruesome nursery rhyme derivative for the return of the evil kittens.
- Sugar Bits: After Bo is stabbed in the chest with a candy lance by Licorice, she starts reciting a despair-filled variation of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" over the course of a few pages, starting here
, ignoring everything and everyone around her: "Mary had a little lamb... a lamb that she soon lost... And no one tried to find this lamb... not at any cost...
- Unsounded: There’s a Crescian nursery rhyme that warns against trusting Lady Ilganyag:
Lady Ilganyag flies at night.
She longs to love a child so,
but in senet wombs no life can grow.
She'll suckle yours and steal it's breath
and love it, love it, love it to death ''"
- VG Cats:
- "Frosty the Snowman" is used in this utterly creepy and disturbing comic
.
- The VG Cats Adaptation with No Name uses the same tune in their Christmas Special
.
- "Frosty the Snowman" is used in this utterly creepy and disturbing comic
- The Cold Boy from The Fear Mythos loves these, befitting his Creepy Child status.
"Come to the window
My baby, with me,
And look at the stars
That shine on the sea!" - The Hard Times: Parodied in the article "Movie Trailer Editor Struggling to Create Menacing Rendition of 'Mary Had a Little Lamb'
", in which attempts at giving "Mary Had a Little Lamb" the Moody Trailer Cover Song go south.
"When people see this trailer, we want them to have nightmares about it," said Lionsgate marketing head Damon Wolf. "There is absolutely nothing more terrifying than hearing the song your mother sang to you every night, but like, scary. You're going to piss your pants the next time you walk into a daycare, just wait and see." - A Japanese Creepypasta entitled Hitchhike has two friends on a cross-country hitchhike end up in a camper with a family of twisted American Christian caricatures.note The family meets up with another friend out in the woods who's over two meters tall, dresses like the dad, and constantly whistles the "Mickey Mouse March" while being a threat throughout the story. The narrator ends up traumatized, and years later, he freaks out when a friend has it for a ringtone and gets a call while he's nearby.
- This
Tumblr post about Sherlock starts out innocent enough, but the last line turns it into this when it's revealed who the singer is:
Hush, little baby, don't you cry
Daddy John is always ready to save your life
Hush, little baby, just stay here
Mama Mary's gonna hold you sweet and dear
Quiet, little baby, just stay still
Sherlock really loves you and always will
Hush, little baby, don't make a sound
Uncle Moriarty's got you now - Cillian Crowe in Survival of the Fittest singing 'happy birthday' to himself, while not exactly a nursery rhyme, embodies this trope perfectly. That is, if you consider that he was currently thinking about killing the person he was talking to at the time — insisting on showing him his 'present' (a meat cleaver).
- Played for Laughs in an episode
of Game Grumps when Arin and Dan make up a nursery tune about a "balognaman", then make up a horror movie trailer about a movie called Balognaman.
Arin: [narrating] Balognaman! Rated R, starts Friday.
Dan (as future victim): It's okay! This just says "bo-log-na"! - In KateModern: Precious Blood, drugged-up serial killer Terrence calls "Little pigs! Little pi-igs!", probably referencing The Shining. He also uses the (already slightly creepy) Breeniverse chant "The Hymn of One is fun!" after describing carrying out a ritualistic murder.
- "Mockingbird"
by FEWDIO Horror has an extremely creepy example:
"And if that diamond ring gets broke, Mama's gonna slit your little throat..." - David Near's voice
for Suicide Mouse features this little gem near the end of the video, to the tune of "Hush, Little Baby". Sweet dreams (NOTE: Video is age-restricted):
"So hush, little human. Don't say a word.
Mickey's gonna watch this whole world burn.
Death's the only true escape.
Dying is the only way.
So just relax and close your eyes.
Now, it's time for you to die." - Sword Art Online Abridged's second episode, in which a player sees a vision of a giant hallucinatory Jesus that tells him to "kill them all", ends with a discordant rendition of "Jesus Loves Me" and the appearance of the Laughing Coffin symbol.
- In Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series, Noah's version of "Hush Little Baby" goes as such:
"Hush, little Mokuba, don't say a word,
Noah's going to keep you in the virtual world,
And if your brother tries to moan,
Noah's going to turn him into stone." - Caddicarus seems to be fond of these, slipping them into his more recent videos now and again.
The wheels on the bus go round and round, all day long… ‘cause someone cut the brakes—
- Adventure Time:
- In "Marceline's Closet", Finn and Jake play a hide-and-seek style game called "Cloud Hunt", which starts with Finn reciting a creepy poem that seems to be about nuclear fallout.
Over the mountain, the ominous cloud
Coming to the cover the land in a shroud
Hide in a bushel, a basement, a cave
But when cloud comes a-huntin', no one's a-saved - During the "Elementals" arc, Princess Bubblegum gets turned into a giant Candy elemental who converts others into overly cheerful candy people by singing "Let Me Call You Sweetheart".
- In "Marceline's Closet", Finn and Jake play a hide-and-seek style game called "Cloud Hunt", which starts with Finn reciting a creepy poem that seems to be about nuclear fallout.
- In Æon Flux, when a former anarchist spy is implanted with a behavior-modifying... thing, she takes up a job writing nursery rhymes. Her recitation of one of her compositions, edited with an extreme close up of her face, is incredibly creepy.
- Arcane: In the opening scene, Powder sings a song about being poor and asking a friend across the river for a penny, promising not to envy. This as she covers her eyes to hide from the violence and dead bodies from Enforcers of Piltover mercilessly gunning down an uprising by the people of Zaun rebelling against the staggering wealth disparity.
- The Mad Hatter in Batman: The Animated Series, based as he is on the Alice in Wonderland character, uses these as part of his schtick. In one scene, he's stalking Bats through a giant maze, taunting him with "Twinkle, Twinkle, little Bat! How I wonder what you're at!"
- In one Bobby's World skit, Bobby's mother sings him to sleep with the Mockingbird Song over Bobby's panic-stricken pleas for her to stop.
- Centaurworld has a few references to a spooky lullaby about a "Nowhere King". The "Nowhere King" turns out to be the Big Bad behind the monsters threatening both Horse and Rider's world and Centaurworld.
- Captain Planet and the Planeteers: "The Deadly Glow" has the Planeteers racing to find a pair of kids who have picked up some cesium (a radioactive mineral) before Duke Nukem does. Duke Nukem references Jack and the Beanstalk while hunting the cesium piece.
Duke Nukem: Fee fi fo fum! I smell atomic cesium!
- Courage the Cowardly Dog:
- In the final episode "Perfect", a twisted, minor version of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" often is heard when preceding the appearance of the strict and cruel ghostly teacher
who proceeds to mentally dismantle the main character into a nervous wreck over his "imperfection". A few times, it's accompanied by the original light and happy version, which makes it worse as it veers into a cracked negative key when something goes wrong. It's even heard at the beginning of the episode.
- Freaky Fred and his theme song: a creepy version of "Ring Around the Rosey".
- In the final episode "Perfect", a twisted, minor version of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" often is heard when preceding the appearance of the strict and cruel ghostly teacher
- Droopy has an example Played for Laughs in the cartoon "Thanks a Latte": after driving Wolfie crazy from unexplicably coming back to ask him for a tip after making him a latte, Wolfie escapes the airplane they're in, only for Droopy to make a dry remark to the rhythm of "Ring Around The Rosey" .
Droopy: You know what? He forgot his latte.
- Justice League:
- In "Only a Dream", John Dee torments the heroes by trapping them in nightmares. Batman, being one of those who's managed to not fall asleep, attempts to block Dee's influence out of his brain by constantly humming "Frere Jacques"/"Brother John", appropriately enough. ("Are you sleeping? Are you sleeping?") What makes it creepy is the end of the episode, when a wide-eyed Dee is humming the same song, having been trapped in a catatonic state by a power backfire.
- In "Wild Cards", the Joker sings his variation of "London Bridge is Falling Down" while kicking the crap out of Batman:
Joker: Big old Bats has fallen down!
On the ground, mind unsound!
Big old Bats has fallen down,
I'm soooooo happy!
- The Rick and Morty episode "Lawnmower Dog" has a Freddy Krueger parody, Scary Terry, who comes along with a white-dressed little girl jumping a cord while singing his nursery rhyme: "A, B, his name is Scary Terry... C, D, he's very scary... E, F, he'll design your death..." When Rick tries to save himself and Morty from Terry, he knocks out the girl and incepts her dream... ending up in a copy of the environment they just escaped from, with another identical little girl continuing: "J, K, he'll really ruin your day..."
- The Simpsons:
- In one of the very first segments on The Tracey Ullman Show, the kids are each being put to bed with something said that keeps them awake and freaked out — Marge sings "Rock-a-bye Baby" to Maggie, who visualizes herself falling out of a tall tree on a windy day.
- In "Lisa's First Word", as a toddler, Bart imagines the creepy Monster Clown bed Homer made him saying "If you should die before you wake...", complete with an Evil Laugh.
- In "Bart of Darkness", Bart and Lisa believe Ned Flanders has killed Maude, we see him heading up to the attic, where Lisa's hiding, carrying an axe and singing "Mary had a little lamb". Even though the audience knows it must be a Mistaken for Murderer plot (even if they've seen it before, and know exactly what's going on), it's still very creepy.
- In another episode, Bart calmly strolls through an Abandoned Playground with an Ironic Nursery Tune playing in the background.
- "Thursdays with Abie" has Nelson threatening Bart to take care of the school's stuffed lamb doll. "Nelson loved a little lamb that kept him nice and sane."
- Parodied and lampshaded in "Halloween of Horror":
"Creepy nursery rhyme, like in every movie..."
- Total Drama World Tour: "The cradle will fall, and down... will... come... GWEN!"
- Later done again in the 2023 reboot, with Scary Girl chanting "if you're gonna hide a body clap your hands" in the confessional after being disrespected by Ripper.
- T.U.F.F. Puppy: "Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep or I'll choke you."
- It's often said that "Ring Around the Rosey" is "actually about the Black Death". The connection is purely apocryphal, but the Urban Legend has risen to such prominence in popular culture that the song is often cited or alluded to as a sinister Ironic Nursery Tune. Heavy metal band Brocas Helm even used this nursery rhyme as the chorus of their song "Black Death".
- London Bridge is Falling Down wears its dark on its jaunty sleeve, my fair lady. It chronicles centuries of lives lost thanks to the difficulties inherent in building anywhere in the shifting Thames estuary. With humour.
- Brazilian nursery rhyme Nana Nenê (Sleep, Little Baby) that goes like this:
Sleep, little baby
So Cuca can catch you
Your father's on the field
Your mother went to work- As for what a "Cuca" is, it's a child-eating hag (not unlike the Baba Yaga character of Russian folklore) with the head of an alligator.
- According to most scholarly interpretations, the English nursery rhyme 'Oranges and Lemons' is either about sex, or the execution of King Charles I (when all the bells of London rang), or both.
- It's used for ironic effect in 1984: the Thought Police echo the creepy final lines as they crash in and arrest Winston.
- For that matter, the horror story "A Visitor from Down Under" by L.P. Hartley has made use of the final lines: "Here comes a candle to light you to bed/ Here comes a chopper to chop off your head."
- The 1960 BBC miniseries An Age of Kings, based on Shakespeare's history plays, has the doomed Princes in the Tower sing it, with the last lines cueing Richard's remark on the fate of Lord Hastings: "Chop off his head! Something we will determine."
- "Under the spreading chestnut tree... I sold you, you sold me..."
- "Alouette" is a song often used to learn body parts in French. It is a rather graphic description of the preparation of a bird for supper: it has to be plucked.
- And they just had to use it in Tom and Jerry. To be exact, The Two Mouseketeers.
- It was also used in the 1949 Pepe Le Pew cartoon "For Scentimental Reasons" (Pepe was singing part of it while the cat was trying to wash the paint — and possibly his stench — off her). Does not help that the song can also be warped into something sexual.
- Near the end of Tales of Monkey Island Chapter 4: The Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood, the Marquis De Singe sings a twisted version of the song while getting the Wind Control Device ready for pulverizing Elaine into a fine powder:
De Singe: Alouette, I will live forever, alouette, immortalité... Who will live forever? Moi... Who will conquer nature? Moi... Alouette, I will live forever, alouette, immortalité...- One episode of The Alvin Show has Alvin, Simon and Theodore singing it in French. Then this occurs:
Dave: I'm sorry, but I can't understand what you're saying. Can you please sing it in English?Alvin, Simon and Theodore: Can we sing it in English?"If you love me, tell me that you love me, if you don't please tell me that you do! Tell me that you love me true, tell me that you really do! Do do do, love me true, aaaah!" - Many tunes written by one Hans Baumann
. He was a children's book writer eventually, and wrote in that style early on—however, the songs he wrote early on were for the Hitler Youth. Particularly unsettling is this one
, which in a children's rhyming style contains the phrase "For today we rule Germany/Tomorrow, the world!"
- While the linked version translates to "today Germany will hear us" both phrases were in use at the time. Just replace the words in bold with gehört to change the mood from hopeful/uplifting to creepy/sinister.
- Another German one:
Fly Zeppelin,Help us in the war,Fly to England,England will be destroyed by fire,Fly Zeppelin.
- The popular German (not Nazi related) nursery rhyme Maikäfer flieg translates to:
Fly may bug, flyFather is fighting in the warMother is in (gun)powder land(Gun)powder land burned downFly may bug, fly
- There are different versions of where the mother is (Pulverland = (Gun)powder land, Pommerland = Pomerania, Kummerland = sorrow land, etc.) The version with Pomerania is often linked to the Thirty Years' War.
- And Hoppe Hoppe Reiter: (Hoppa, Hoppa, Horseman, it doesn't translate well)
Hoppa, hoppa, horseman,When/if he falls he screams,If he falls into the ditch,The ravens will eat him,If he falls into the bog/swamp,The horseman will go *splash*.- This one (very probably from the Thirty Years' War) doesn't need any Wild Mass Guessing about its content:
Pray, children, praytomorrow the Swede[s] will cometomorrow Oxestern
will come
he will teach the children how to pray! - One of the most common Polish children's rhymes and counting games goes in translation:
A bomb fell into the cellarAnd wrote on the blackboardSOS — a stupid dog
- It is surprisingly easy to miss the extremely creepy meaning of the first line because "bomb!" used to be a slang term for "cool!" in Polish a (long) while ago.
- "Rock-A-Bye Baby" is about a kid falling out of a tree.
- Shel Silverstein lampshades it in one of his children's poems:
Rock-a-bye baby, in the treetop
Don't you know a treetop's no safe place to rock?
And who put you up there, and your cradle, too?
Baby, I think someone down here's got it in for you.- There is a version of it from the early days of the Industrial Revolution and the bleak part of the common man:
Rock-a-bye-baby, on the tree topWhen you grow old your wages will stopWhen you have spent the little you've madeFirst to the poorhouse and then to the grave - There's a common nursery rhyme
about Mickey Mouse getting ran over by a train.
Mickey on the railway picking up stones,Down came an engine, and broke Mickey's bones."Ah!" said Mickey, "That's not fair.""Oh!" said the engine driver, "I don't care." - Yankee Doodle is a fairly common nursery rhyme in the United States (and much more common in Britain). The song dates back to the Revolutionary War, and in context calls the average American (Yankee Doodle) a backwards hick with no sense of fashion.
- Already during the war it had been adopted by members of the American army, who sang it with an ironic pride. Now, the irony is largely forgotten, but the later verses are much more obvious in their deprecation of the Americans than the well-known first verse and chorus.
- "Waltzing Matilda" is actually about a sheep poacher who commits suicide by drowning rather than be executed by hanging. "Matilda" is what swagmen (basically drifters with no home thanks to the depression) called his bedroll and bundle of personal possessions, so "Waltzing Matilda" was the slang for "wandering the country carrying my belongings". The song still made it onto an episode of Kidsongs, a children's singing program, minus the final verse with the swagman's suicide.
- And suddenly, its use in On the Beach (the 1959 film, at least) is all the more meaningful.
- The traditional lullaby from the Southern United States, "All the Pretty Horses" (or "Hush-a-bye"), was sung by black slaves during the pre-Civil War period. The line "wee little lamby...cried for her mammy" refers to slaves forcibly separated from their own families in order to serve their owners.
- Ah, Mary
, how does your garden grow?
- Serial killer, Mary Ann Cotton, killed 20 of her husbands and offspring in County Durham in the 1800s. She had her own nursery tune, sung after her hanging in 1873:
"Mary Ann CottonShe's dead and she's rottenShe lies in her bed,With her eyes wide openSing, sing, oh, what can I sing,Mary Ann Cotton is tied up with stringWhere, where? Up in the airSellin' black puddings a penny a pair."
- The Lizzie Borden jump-rope rhyme is similar. It should be noted, however, that Lizzie was acquitted of the double homicide.note
"Lizzie Borden took an axeAnd gave her mother forty whacks.When she saw what she had doneShe gave her father forty-one."
- There's a Dutch one that translates into English as:
"There were seven little frogsin a farmer's pond.The pond was covered in ice,the frogs half-dead.They didn't croak, they didn't croakout of hunger and sadness.There were seven little frogsin a farmer's pond."
- Another Dutch nursery rhyme called "Little lawyer went out" sings of the death of said lawyer, all in a happy tune. The lyrics translate to something like:
The little lawyer went out, tweedledee, tweedledumCarrying is hat on his arm, tweedledee, tweedledumHe stood still at a tavern, tweedledee, tweedledumHe had stockfish for breakfast, tweedledee, tweedledumA fish bone got stuck in his throat, tweedledee, tweedledumA doctor was fetched, tweedledee, tweedledumBut the doctor arrived too late, tweedledee, tweedledumThis is how the little lawyer died, tweedledee, tweedledumGrass is now growing on his stomach, tweedledee, tweedledum - A bunch of Danish children's songs is about lovely events like crows and rabbits being shot by hunters, fish and crabs being cooked alive and eaten, royality being executed, and a lot of other deaths.
- The American folk song "Oh My Darling, Clementine" is about a clumsy girl tripping into a river and drowning. Her miner father then commits suicide in despair. The song is sung from the viewpoint of Clementine's lover, who wishes to join her.
- Specifically, she dies because her lover can't swim, hence why he's "dreadful sorry."
- Happy ending though: The guy hooks up with Clementine's little sister in the end.
- Subverted. Although it starts off sounding like a sad ballad, it's actually a tongue-in-cheek parody of ballads, albeit sung in a deadpan style. For example, the lyrics mention that Clementine's feet were so large, she had to wear boxes in place of shoes, which a serious romantic ballad wouldn't mention. However, the parody has survived long after the original ballads it was meant to satirize fell out of fashion.
- Bobby Darin's version of the song changes it to her being so enormously fat and heavy that a bridge collapses under her, and then suggests that she floated out to sea and was hunted by whalers.
- "Goodnight Irene" (as performed by Leadbelly, the songwriter):
- I love Irene God knows I doLove her till the seas run dryAnd if Irene turns her back on me,I'll take morphine and die
- Field Operation Manual for early Panzerfaust had a two-line stanza on every page, forming a short poem mimicking popular children's rhymes. It begins with
: Der schwerste Panzer geht in Brand / Nimmst Du die Panzerfaust zur Hand (The heaviest armor goes up in flame / Once the Panzefaust in hand you take). May count for real-life example of Mood Dissonance.
- Around that time there was another cheerful jingle written in the German language: Nach dem Arbeit, vor dem Essen, Haende waschen, nicht vergessen. ("After work, before eating, don't forget to wash your hands.") And where was this helpful reminder posted up? The synthetic rubber factory in Auschwitz! This comes from a really old saying used to teach children hygiene: Nach dem Pipi, vor dem Essen, Händewaschen nicht vergessen! ("After wee-wee, before eating, don't forget to wash hands").
- Any camp counselor will verify that kids love dark humour and slightly gory songs. Classic camp songs/rhymes as examples (notable lyrics in brackets) include Sgt. Billy Madison (he jumped from 40 000 ft, forgot to pull the chute. SPLAT!), Great green gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts (and I forgot my spoon!), The Titanic (All the husbands and wives, little children lost their lives, it was sad when the great ship went down), and The Shark Song (and all was red, 'cause they were dead). Also note that each one of those and others (and there are so many others) are sung with a happy, upbeat tune.
- Commonly seen in kids' circles is a different shark song about losing your leg in a shark attack, dying due to blood loss, and finding out you're going to hell. Really gets the spirits up for a week of camping. A heavily Bowdlerized version of the song underwent Memetic Mutation as Baby Shark.
- This seems as international tract, because among Polish Scouts there are, for example, play-song when they sing something like (loosely translated):
Old Abraham have 7 sons;7 sons have old Abraham;And they sit down and eat old men;And sing like that:Right arm, left arm;Right leg, left leg;And head too, and rest body too;
- An Israeli parody of a well-known Hanukkah song goes:
I have a candle, I have a candle, I have a thin candle;Why does the parachute stay in the bag?The reserve one won't open either:On the ground I go SPLAT!
- There's a Finnish song known as 'Tuuti Tuuti', which is sung like a lullaby but is literally about a peasant mother singing to her dead child, wishing it safe passage into the afterlife. Translated verses include speaking about 'children in Hades' and that there will be a lot of room and food over in the hereafter.
Hush, my baby to Hadesto sleep under the grassto swing with children of Hades,to be held by the maids of HadesThe cradle of Hades is more beautifulthe sleep of Death is betterHush, hush my dark onein dark cradlewith a dark baby-sitterin the dark croftMansions of Hades are largerooms of Hades are spacious
- This little gem has been taught to kids as recent as the 80s.
Tell Tale Tit,Your tongue shall be slit.And all the dogs in the town,Shall have a little bit.
- There's a Finnish children's rhyme often used in a game similar to the English game/song "London Bridge is Falling Down" that ends in these words:
Hooray, hooray, wedding! Clock already struck twelve!The emperor's waiting in the palaceAs black as soil, as white as foal,The one who comes last, he is Death.
- There are several parodies of popular Finnish Christmas songs (especially the ones who children have to sing a bit more than they would like), that are quite bloody and violent. One parody goes more or less like this:
The Christmas tree has been stolenThe cops are at the doorSanta Claus has been hanged to the branches of the spruceThe small candles on the tree burn SantaSanta cries in despair "Bring flowers to my grave!"
- "Blood on the Saddle" is a catchy, never-ending ditty about falling off a horse and squishing one's brains out.
- The traditional Jewish equivalent of "The House That Jack Built" ends with the ANGEL OF DEATH coming to kill the butcher who killed the ox who drank the water that quenched the fire that burned the stick that hit the dog that bit the cat that ate the goat that Daddy bought for two zuzim... (There may be another verse after that about the Angel of Death himself dying in the End of Days, but that just makes it weirder).
- There is indeed another verse, and there comes the Lord (literally, "the Holy One, Blessed be He"), probably in the End of Days.
- A Viennese song, "Heidschi Bumm-Beidschi", is often sung as a Christmas carol. Its origins lie in the Turk siege of Vienna, and "Heidschi Bumm-Beidschi" refers to Turk skirmishers who took children as slaves to be raised as soldiers. So it was a creepy nursery tune to begin with.
- Walking down the street at the height of the 1918 Spanish Influenza, you would hear a few little girls in the playground singing this song as they jump rope:
I had a little birdie,Her name was Enza.I opened up the window;In-flew-Enza.
- This is the chorus of The Hearse Song
, a US/UK children's song about decomposition. It's... oozy. Very oozy.
Worms go inand worms go outThrough your stomach and out your mouthAnd when you see the hearse go byYou know you'll be the next to die.- Some versions, however, play up the Black Comedy angle instead, with verses like "The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the worms play Pinochle on your snout!
- Another decomposition-based example: the Hungarian version of John Brown's body (sang to the chorus of the Battlehymn of the Republic) (called literally "Uncle John in battle") is sang as a children's song. The third and fourth stanzas are (translated back):
Uncle John's body's being eaten by the worms,Uncle John's body's being eates by the worms,Uncle John's body's being eaten by the wormsAnd one of them cries:Oh, how stinky this John is!Oh, how stinky this John is!Oh, how stinky this John is!This man's already rotting away!
- "Mon Coq Est Mort". A song frequently used as a warm-up for school chorus classes, upbeat and peppy...and the title translates to "My Rooster is Dead". At least one high-schooler who never took French likely ended up unnerved when they had it translated by a French-speaking classmate.
- "Malbrough s'en va-t-en guerre" is a popular French folk song about the titular Duke of Marlborough failing to return from the war on account of deadness. Much wailing and rending of garments ensues. (It's also a well-known children's song in Spain, with Malborough rendered this time as "Mambrú".)
- A few older Japanese lullabies count as this. Sung by the poor babysitters of children from rich families, they can be summed up as, "I hate this job, I hate this kid, I hate my life." Some of them can count as Tear Jerkers
I certainly hateTaking care of the crying childThey hate me for keeping the child to cryThey hate me for keeping the child to cryThe sleeping child'sCuteness and innocent look!The crying child's ugly lookThe crying child's ugly lookI would hate babysitting beyond Bon FestivalThe snow begins to fall, and the baby criesHow can I be happy even when Bon Festival is here?I don't even have nice clothes or a sash to wearThis child continues to cry and is mean to meI get thinner because the baby cries all dayI would quickly quit here and go backTo my parents' home over thereTo my parents' home over there
- There is also Toryanse
and Kagome Kagome
. The former has something to do with a kid turning seven and how you would either go to a shrine to celebrate their birthdays (infant mortality being high at the time) or you would be having their funerals Context and the latter no one is too sure of; however, some theories range from being about someone being executed, prostitution, or a pregnant woman being pushed down a flight of stairs (which causes her to miscarry).
- There is also Toryanse
- There's a Spanish song, "Don Federico", one version of which goes:
Don Federicokilled his wife,chopped her up,and threw her in the pan.People who passed bysmelled the stink:it was the wifedancing cha-cha-cha.
- And then it keeps on about people losing parts of themselves so they can marry someone else, who then loses something in turn:
Don Federico lost his walletso he could marry a seamstress.The seamstress lost her thimbleso she could marry a general.[...]The Pepsi-cola lost its bubblesso it could marry a wicked witch.The wicked witch lost her kittenso she could marry don Federico.Don Federico said "no"and the wicked witch cursed him.A year later, he told her "yes"- There's another Spanish song named "Let's tell lies" which plays this trope literally:
Now that we're going slowNow that we're going slowlet's tell lies tra-la-raLet's tell lies tra-la-raLet's tell liesThe hares run through the seaThe hares run through the seaThe sardines through the mount, tra-la-raThe sardines through the mount, tra-la-raThe sardines through the mountI left my campI left my campWith a six-week hunger tra-la-raWith a six-week hunger tra-la-raWith a six-week hunger...- The song "A girl's going to Atocha" starts off describing the titular girl's pretty hair, the combing of the hair, the pretty gold comb and glass hairclips and so forth. Then suddenly:
The girl's ill, carabí
The girl's ill, carabí
Maybe she'll die, carabí urí, carabí urá
Maybe she'll die, carabí urí, carabí urá
The girl's died, carabí [bis]
They're taking her to be buried, carabí urí, carabí urá [bis]
The box was gold, carabí [bis]
The lid was glass, carabí urí, carabí urá [bis]
[Cut to birdies singing happily over her coffin] - The translated lyrics of this
Russian lullaby are basically, "Be smart about where you choose to sleep because if you're not careful, then a wolf will come, bite you in the stomach, and drag you off into the forest."
- Many a child has played the "Concentration" game at sleepovers, which starts with sitting behind the victim and telling them that "people are dying, children are crying" and then miming different things like having an egg cracked on their head, getting stabbed in the back with a knife, having blood running down...
- The Polish lullaby "Był sobie król" tells the story of a king, a pageboy and a princess, who lived happily together until they were Eaten Alive by various animals. At the end, the narrator insists we shouldn't be sad for them, since they were made of sweets. Ironically, this reassurance gives the song an even more unsettling feel.
- US Kindergartens now teaching nursery rhymes to prep kids for school shooters
. An example, sung to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star:
Lockdown, lockdownLock the doorShut the lights offSay no moreGo behind the desk and hideWait until it’s safe insideLockdown, lockdownIt’s all doneNow it’s time to have some fun! - There's a Hungarian children's song from the time of the Turkish invasion, Katalinka, szállj el (Ladybug, fly away), detailing what the Turks would do to the poor ladybug if she doesn't fly:
Ladybug, fly awayThe Turks are comingThey'll put you in salt(water) wellThey'll take you out of there too,They'll put you under wheelsThey'll take you out from there too,Lo, here the Turks are coming,They'll shoot you dead right away!
- Yet another song from the same time Gólya, gólya, gilice (Stork, stork, gilicenote )
Stork, stork, giliceWhy is your leg bloody?A turkish boy had cut itA hungarian boy will heal itWith a whistle, a drum, and a reed violin
- It's a Small World (as in, the song from the Disney ride) becomes this with context: the Cuban Missile Crisis.
It's a world of hopesAnd a world of fearsThere's so much that we shareThat it's time we're aware
- Although she didn't specify which one, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex described humming a lullaby in order to calm herself and her son when she realized that she was having a miscarriage even as she was cradling him.
- The cheerfully repetitive Yorkshire folk tune On Ilkla Moor Baht 'at describes the singer's friend going out to court a woman on the titular Ilkla Moor and forgetting his hat, whereupon he catches his death of cold, is buried and eaten by worms, then the worms are eaten by ducks, and finally the ducks are eaten by the village folk:
''Then we will all have eaten thee, eaten thee,
Then we will all have eaten thee
Eaten thee
On Ilkla Moor Baht 'at... - English folk tune Ladybird, Ladybird has a few regional variations, but the most common is probably:
Ladybird, Ladybird, fly away home
Your house is on fire, your children will burn
All but one, and her name is Ann
And she hid under the frying pan - Joan Petit Is Dancing
is an Occitan folk song that is about Joan Petit, one of the leaders of the Croquant peasant revolts of 1643, being tortured and executed by the breaking wheel, with "dancing" referring to his body parts being crushed one by one. Nowadays a sligtly more sanitized version of it, distanced from the historical context, is used in France, Spain and Italy as a childrens song that teaches kids the words for body parts.

