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A Comparison of Czech and English Nursery Rhymes MASARYK UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF EDUCATION DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE A COMPARISON OF CZECH AND ENGLISH NURSERY RHYMES Diploma Thesis Brno 2008 Supervised by: Written by: Mgr. Irena Headlandová Kalischová Hana Doležalová DECLARATION I hereby declare that I have worked on this diploma thesis on my own and that I have used only the sources listed in the references. I also give consent to deposit this thesis in the library at Masaryk University or the Information system of the Faculty of Education and to be made available for study purposes. ________________________ Hana Doležalová TABLE OF CONTENTS: INTRODUCTION …………………………………………………………………...5 1. DEFINITION OF NURSERY RHYMES………………………………………..6 2. FOLKLORE …………………………………………………...………………..7 2.1 History of folklore………………………………….…………...……….…...8 2.2 Categories of folklore .………………………………………………….........9 2.3 Czech folklore…………………….…………………………………………11 2.3.1 Genres which are abundantly represented in Czech folklore literature……………………………………………………………………..11 2.4 A comparison of Czech and English folklore……………………………….13 3. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CZECH AND ENGLISH RHYMES……………14 3.1 Definition of the word “rhyme” ……………………………………...……..14 3.2 Czech rhyme……………………………………………... ………………...15 3.2.1 Functions of Czech rhyme…………………………………………….15 3.2.2.Types of Czech verse………………………………………………….15 3.3 English rhyme……………………………………………………………….20 4. HISTORY OF NURSERY RHYMES .…………………………………………24 4.1 History of English nursery rhymes…………...……………………………..24 4.1.1 Nursery rhymes of Mother Goose……………………………………..27 4.2 History of Czech nursery rhymes…………………………………...………29 4.2.1 Czech folklore collectors……………………………………………...29 5. CATEGORIES OF NURSERY RHYMES………………………………..……32 5.1 Lullaby………………………………………………………………………32 5.2 Alphabet rhyme, counting rhyme, finger game……………………………..34 5.3 Nursery rhymes that were derived from adult´s rhymes…………………….38 5.4 Categories of Czech nursery rhymes………………………………………..39 6. NURSERY RHYMES´LYRICS……………………………………………...…42 6.1 Some most famous lyrics and possible origins of old English nursery rhymes…………………………………………………………………………...42 6.2 Lyrics of most famous Czech nursery rhymes………………………………60 7. THE ROLE OF NURSERY RHYMES IN PROCESS OF LEARNING LANGUAGE……………………………………………………………………67 7.1 The role of nursery rhymes in the process of a foreign language teaching…68 8. CZECH NURSERY RHYMES AND ITS USAGE IN A SPEECH THERAPY............................................................................................................70 9. CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………….…...73 10. REFERENCES………………………………………………………………….75 - 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my supervisor prof. Mgr.Irena Headlandová Kalischová, who has helped me with the present thesis, especially for her proposals and valuable advice which I appreciated a lot. Brno, 20 th April 2007 - 4 INTRODUCTION “When asked to recall childhood memories, very few if any of us, would not include the fabulous tales of Mother Goose, nor would we forget the wonderful nursery rhymes we were able to recite long before we could read or write.” (Vikki Harris) What is so wonderful about nursery rhymes? It is perhaps the fact that we were able to recite them long before we could read or write and we heard them even before we could understand a single word. These tales and rhymes bring us pleasant and warm memories of our childhood and have stayed with us and many others around the world for ages. They are wonderful also because they are immortal , we have heard them from our parents, our parents inherited them from their parents. They have lasted hundreds of years and still will be passed from one generation to another. Henry Bett explains, “we owe the preservation of our nursery rhymes and nursery tales from remote ages to the astonishing persistence of popular tradition, reinforced by the characteristic conservatism of childhood which insists on having rhymes repeated the same way each time.” (3) The topic of my thesis is: “A Comparison of English and Czech nursery rhymes”. As stated above, the reasons which determined my choice of this topic are as follows: 1) There is almost nobody who wouldn´t be able to recite at least a few nursery rhymes. However, they do not know exactly what they mean or where they come from. 2) Even though there are quite a lot of opportunities to get a list of English or Czech nursery rhymes, it is much harder to find more detailed information about them. 3) Another reason is my interest in the area of nursery rhymes. It is obvious that most English and Czech nursery rhymes have a lot of common features, but I hope this thesis will help with further investigation in the area of the origin, history and mainly divergence of these two groups of nursery rhymes. Sometimes nursery rhymes are slighted and taken as a low literary style acceptable only for children. However, on closer examination we may find that they - 5 are constituents of our culture as any other literary style and maybe even more than that because almost everybody is able to say some nursery rhymes. Moreover, we can also find them in other literary works. Let us take, for instance, “Alice´s adventures in Wonderland” by Lewis Caroll, in which we can find many of old nursery rhymes. Other examples may be found in the title of the tale “And He Built a Crooked House” by R. Heinlein. And also in Tolkien´s works, for instance, Frodo´s favourite song “Hey diddle diddle” and many others. Before talking about any of the particular examples it is necessary to mention the way we should interpret the term “nursery rhyme”. As it is perceptible from the headline the main topic of this work is to look closer at the differences between English and Czech nursery rhymes. Nevertheless, firstly it should be discovered what is common to all nursery rhymes, including English and Czech nursery rhymes. This will provide an explanation of term. 1. Definition of nursery rhymes “A nursery rhyme is a traditional song or poem taught to young children, originally in the nursery. Learning such verse assists in the development of vocabulary, and several examples deal with rudimentary counting skills. It also encourages children to enJoy music. In addition, specific actions, motions, or dances are often associated with particular songs.” (“Nursery rhymes” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia .) Encyclopedia Britannica defines nursery rhymes as “a verse customarily told or sung to small children. The oral tradition of nursery rhymes is ancient, but new verses have steadily entered the stream.”(“Nursery rhymes”Encyklopaedia Britannica.) Nursery rhymes are part of a very comprehensive group called “folklore”. - 6 2 Folklore When you ask people what they imagine when hearing the word “folklore” they will probably say that folklore is connected with something traditional, old fashioned, rural or primitive. Folklore is much more than that. See a few definitions bellow. According to encyclopaedia Wikipedia, folklore is: “the body of expressive culture, including tales, music, dance, legends, oral history, proverbs, Jokes, popular beliefs, customs, and so forth within a particular population comprising the traditions (including oral traditions) of that culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The academic and usually ethnographic study of folklore is sometimes called folkloristics.” (“Nursery rhymes” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia .) Encyclopaedia Britannica defines folklore “in modern usage, an academic discipline the subject matter of which (also called folklore ) comprises the sum total of traditionally derived and orally or imitatively transmitted literature, material culture, and custom of subcultures within predominantly literate and technologically advanced societies” (“Nursery rhymes”Encyklopaedia Britannica.) Shoemaker says in “The Emergence of Folklore in Everyday Life”: “Folklore is part of the experiences and practices of our everyday life. This means that we are all involved in the process of transmitting and performing folklore, even though we may not be aware of it.” He also says: „Folklore can be put within the context of culture. Culture is a whole way of life. It is seen as being the totality of human expressions in a particular society. Human expressions take many forms, from behaviour such as habits, fears, attitudes, or customs to conscious constructions like art, music, literature, architecture, thought, language and symbols.” (Shoemaker 9) The study of folklore is called “folkloristics.” - 7 2.1 History of folklore The conception of folklore arose in the 19th century. At first, it served as an instrument for ideology of romantic nationalism, which should use oral traditions for serving modern ideological goals. In the 20th century its purpose changed and it began to be used without any political goals. The change has started when the Brothers Grimm, Wilhelm and Jakob Grimm, collected orally passed German tales and published the first series “Children's and Household Tales” in 1812. An Englishman, William Thomas, is considered as the first man who took this term and used it for what was called “popular antiquities”, in 1846. It is difficult to explain the term “folklore” because it equally concerns itself with mythic and religious elements as well as traditions of everyday life. Folklore often binds the practical and the esoteric into one narrative package. As it has been stated, folklore has many religious elements and it has often been unified with mythology. It is sometimes equated to the term “myth”.
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