Mother Goose I have heard about Mother Goose long time before, from the novel "And Then There Were None", written by Agatha Christie. At that time, I just felt the poem is a little wired as a nursery rhyme, without any further thinking. Today, someone mentioned that "Who Killed Cock Robin" and "London Bridge is Falling Down" are also in the same book, and that made me become curious about the book. I picked up some poems randomly. And….I was shocked. The poem that surprised me most is the one called "Lizzie Borden Took an Axe". Its content is as follows: “Lizzie Borden took an axe, and gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one.” A nursery rhyme, which is written for children, tells a story of a murder! The poems remind me of a TV series called Horrible History, made by cbbc. It is an excellent comedy. It tells the stories that really happened in the history. It has stories like the miserable life of Victorian children, Henry VIII and his six wives. While it also has others like the Celts used to decorate their fence with heads of enemies, the ancient Egyptian would remove entrails of the corpse before making mummy. These kind of stories seldom appear in Chinese TV dramas, even if the audience are adults. Most stories for children always shows the bright side of the world. Others are designed so that children can learn something from it. The ugly duckling will always become a swan and the prince and the princess will always live happily ever after. Some people say the reason is the different attitudes toward death. Chinese regard death as an ominous thing, and will avoid talking about it if possible. It is a bit like Escapism. While western people will face the death directly even in their childhood. No wonder why criminal TV series of America and British have so many “horrible” senses (at least for me). And I have heard that our neighbor, Japanese people have some “horrible” nursery rhymes, too. So maybe our Chinese way is the minority. But I still cannot understand why children should be taught about such a serious topic so early. Or maybe I will when I become a parent.