Nursery Rhymes
The nursery rhymes bring to our mind something babyish. Almost all the nursery rhymes are meaningless. At best, they are an attempt at a crude versification. The meaning in them is also crude. Some of them may be imaginative but as a form of literature, their place is at the bottom. They appear to have been composed when mankind was at an early stage of civilization. They may please children, for anything without sense pleases them. But they would not appeal to a mature mind. This was the attitude before psychological studies revealed the thought content in nursery rhymes. Psychology has brought to light the thought processes of the primitive mind and these thought processes are reflected in the nursery rhymes and folktales. The collection of this material from various communities of the world has provided us with interesting facts about the history and the background of these communities. From this point of view, nursery rhymes are very valuable. Psycho-analysis also revealed that the mind of the child is like the mind of the primitive man. So nursery rhymes appeal to him. Also, nursery rhymes form the basics of literature. Higher flights of imagination are not possible without going into the depth of our primitive literary inheritance.
