Row row row your boat
Gently down the stream
Merrily merrily merrily merrily
Life is but a dream


Who would have thought as a child that such wisdom lies in nursery rhymes?

That was the first verse of poetry I ever remember having learnt.

It seemed to take an eternity for me to work out what a butter dream was...
Ah, the mind of a three-year-old!

But as you say, such simple profundity (once I'd worked out what it meant.)

I didn't know this song until I started working with medicine circles, where I met it as the English words (not a direct translation) of a Brazilian medicine song "Pedala".

Then years later I heard it somewhere as a nursery rhyme and was surprised that that was its original function.


Maybe most adults are too thick for such wisdom to penetrate their membranes, so nursery rhymes is the path of least resistance... the child's ear-brain barrier doesn't filter out joy as much as the adult's does.