Illustration of "Hey Diddle Diddle", a popular nursery rhyme

The term nursery rhyme is used for "traditional" poems for young children in Britain and many other countries, but usage only dates from the 19th century and in North America the older ‘Mother Goose Rhymes’ is still often used.^[1]

History[link]

Lullabies[link]

The oldest children's songs of which we have records are lullabies, intended to help a child sleep. Lullabies can be found in every human culture.^[2] The English term lullaby is thought to come from "lu, lu" or "la la" sound made by mothers or nurses to calm children, and "by by" or "bye bye", either another lulling sound, or a term for good night.^[3] Until the modern era lullabies were usually only recorded incidentally in written sources. The Roman nurses' lullaby, "Lalla, Lalla, Lalla, aut dormi, aut lacte", is recorded in a scholium on Persius and may be the oldest to survive.^[4]

Many medieval English verses associated with the birth of Jesus take the form of a lullaby, including "Lullay, my liking, my dere son, my sweting" and may be versions of contemporary lullabies.^[3] However, most of those used today date from the 17th century. For example, a well known lullaby such as "Rock-a-bye, baby on a tree top", cannot be found in records until the late-18th century when it was printed by John Newbery (c. 1765).^[3]

Early nursery rhymes[link]

From the later Middle Ages we have records of short children's rhyming songs, often as marginalia.^[5] From the mid-16th century they begin to be recorded in English plays.^[6] Most nursery rhymes were not written down until the 18th century, when the publishing of children's books began to move from polemic and education towards entertainment, but there is evidence for many rhymes existing before this, including "To market, to market" and "Cock a doodle doo", which date from at least the late 16th century.^[7]

The first English collections, Tommy Thumb's Song Book and a sequel, Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, are both thought to have been published before 1744, with such songs becoming known as 'Tommy Thumb's songs'.^[8] The publication of John Newbery's compilation of English rhymes, Mother Goose's Melody, or, Sonnets for the Cradle (London, c.1765), is the first record we have of many classic rhymes, still in use today.^[9][10] These rhymes seem to have come from a variety of sources, including traditional riddles, proverbs, ballads, lines of Mummers' plays, drinking songs, historical events, and, it has been suggested, ancient pagan rituals.^[1] About half of the currently recognised "traditional" English rhymes were known by the mid-18th century.^[11]

19th century[link]

In the early 19th century printed collections of rhymes began to spread to other countries, including Robert Chambers's Popular Rhymes of Scotland (1826) and in the United States, Mother Goose's Melodies (1833).^[1] From this period we sometimes know the origins and authors of rhymes—for instance, "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", which combined the 18th-century French tune "Ah vous dirai-je, Maman" with a poem by English writer Jane Taylor and 'Mary Had a Little Lamb', written by Sarah Josepha Hale of Boston in 1830.^[1]

Early folk song collectors also often collected (what were now known as) nursery rhymes, including in Scotland Sir Walter Scott and in Germany Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim in Des Knaben Wunderhorn (1806–1808).^[12] The first, and possibly the most important academic collection to focus in this area was James Orchard Halliwell's, The Nursery Rhymes of England (1842) and Popular Rhymes and Tales in 1849, in which he divided rhymes into antiquities (historical), fireside stories, game-rhymes, alphabet-rhymes, riddles, nature-rhymes, places and families, proverbs, superstitions, customs, and nursery songs (lullabies).^[13] By the time of Sabine Baring-Gould's A Book of Nursery Songs (1895), folklore was an academic study, full of comments and foot-notes. A professional anthropologist, Andrew Lang (1844–1912) produced The Nursery Rhyme Book in 1897. The early years of the 20th century are notable for the illustrations to children's books including Caldecott's Hey Diddle Diddle Picture Book (1909) and Arthur Rackham's Mother Goose (1913). The definitive study of English rhymes remains the work of Iona and Peter Opie.^[11]

Meanings of nursery rhymes[link]

Many nursery rhymes have been argued to have hidden meanings and origins. John Bellenden Ker (?1765–1842), for example, wrote four volumes arguing that English nursery rhymes were actually written in 'Low Saxon', a hypothetical early form of Dutch. He then 'translated' them back into English, revealing in particular a strong tendency to anti-clericalism.^[14][15] Many of the ideas about the links between rhymes and historical persons, or events, can be traced back to Katherine Elwes's book The Real Personages of Mother Goose (1930), in which she linked famous nursery-rhyme characters with real people, on little or no evidence. She assumed that children's songs were a peculiar form of coded historical narrative, propaganda or covert protest, and rarely considered that they could have been written simply for entertainment.^[14][16]

Nursery rhyme revisionism[link]

"Baa, Baa, Black Sheep", from a 1901 illustration by William Wallace Denslow

There have been several attempts, across the world, to revise nursery rhymes (along with fairy tales and popular songs). Even in the late 18th century we can sometimes see how rhymes like "Little Robin Redbreast" were cleaned up for a young audience.^[22] In the late 19th century the major concern seems to have been violence and crime, which led leading children's publishers in the United States like Jacob Abbot and Samuel Goodrich to 'improve' mother goose rhymes.^[23]

In the early and mid-20th centuries this was a form of bowdlerisation, concerned with some of the more violent elements of nursery rhymes and led to the formation of organisations like the British 'Society for Nursery Rhyme Reform'.^[24] Psychoanalysts such as Bruno Bettelheim strongly criticized this revisionism, on the grounds that it weakened their usefulness to both children and adults as ways of symbolically resolving issues and it has been argued that revised versions may not perform the functions of catharsis for children, or allow them to imaginatively deal with violence and danger.^[25]

In the late 20th century revisionism of nursery rhymes became associated with the idea of political correctness. Most attempts to reform nursery rhymes on this basis appear to be either very small scale, light-hearted updating, like Felix Dennis' When Jack Sued Jill – Nursery Rhymes for Modern Times (2006), or satires written as if from the point of view of political correctness in order to condemn reform.^[26] The controversy over changing the language of "Baa Baa Black Sheep" in Britain from 1986, because, it was alleged in the popular press, it was seen as racially dubious, was apparently based only on a rewriting of the rhyme in one private nursery, as an exercise for the children.^[27]

Nursery rhymes and education[link]

It has been argued that nursery rhymes set to music aid in a child's development.^[28] Research also supports the assertion that music and rhyme increase a child's ability in spatial reasoning, which leads to greater success in school in the subjects of mathematics and science.^[29]

See also[link]

Children's literature portal

Notes[link]

A black sheep stands out from the flock

The Black Sheep, from a 1901 edition of Mother Goose by William Wallace Denslow.

A black sheep (Hebridean)

In the English language, black sheep is an idiom used to describe an odd or disreputable member of a group, especially within a family. The term has typically been given negative implications, implying waywardness.^[1] It derived from the atypical and unwanted presence of other black individuals in flocks of white sheep.

In psychology, the black sheep effect refers to the tendency of group members to judge likeable ingroup members more positively and deviant ingroup member more negatively than comparable outgroup members.^[2]

Idiomatic usage[link]

The term originated from the occasional black sheep which are born into a flock of white sheep due to a genetic process of recessive traits. Black wool was considered commercially undesirable because it could not be dyed.^[1] In 18th and 19th century England, the black color of the sheep was seen as the mark of the devil.^[3] In modern usage, the expression has lost some of its negative connotations, though the term is usually given to the member of a group who has certain characteristics or lack thereof deemed undesirable by that group.^[4]

The idiom is also found in other languages, e.g., French, Serbian, Bulgarian, Hebrew, Portuguese, Bosnian, Greek, Turkish, Dutch, Afrikaans, Swedish, Danish, Spanish, Czech, Slovak, Romanian and Polish. The same concept is illustrated in some other languages by the phrase "white crow": for example belaya vorona (белая ворона) in Russian and kalag-e sefid (کلاغ سفید) in Persian. A variant form of black sheep, "the red sheep of the family", was used by Jessica Mitford to describe herself, a communist in a family of aristocratic fascists.^[5]

Biological origin[link]

In sheep, a white fleece is not albinism but a dominant gene that actively switches color production off, thus obscuring any other color that may be present.^{[citation needed]} As a result, a black fleece in most sheep is recessive, so if a white ram and a white ewe are each heterozygous for black, in about 25% of cases they will produce a black lamb. In fact in most white sheep breeds only a few white sheep are heterozygous for black, so black lambs are usually much rarer than this. Some breeds of sheep (such as the Hebridean, Ouessant, Black Welsh Mountain and Karakul) are normally black.

Black sheep effect (Psychology)[link]

Overview[link]

In 1988, Marques, Yzerbyt and Leyens^[2] conducted an experiment where Belgian students rated the following groups according to trait-descriptors (e.g., sociable, polite, violent, cold): unlikeable Belgian students, unlikeable North African students, likeable Belgian students, and likeable North African students. The results provided support that the favourability is the highest for likeable ingroup members and the lowest for unlikeable ingroup members, whereas the favourability of unlikeable and likeable outgroup members is between the both former ones. These extreme judgements of likeable and unlikeable (i.e., deviant) ingroup members, relatively to comparable outgroup members is called “black sheep effect”. This effect has been shown in various intergroup contexts and under a variety of conditions, and in many experiments manipulating likeability and norm deviance (e.g., Branscombe, Wann, Noel, & Coleman, 1993;^[6] Coull, Yzerbyt, Castano, Paladino, & Leemans, 2001;^[7] Khan & Lambert, 1998;^[8] Pinto, Marques, Levine, & Abrams, 2010).^[9]

Explanations[link]

A prominent explanation of the black sheep effect derives from the social identity approach (see social identity theory, Tajfel & Turner, 1979;^[10] and self-categorization theory, Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987).^[11] Group members are motivated to sustain a positive and distinctice social identity and, as a consequence, group members emphasize likeable members and evaluate them more positve than outgroup members, bolstering the positive image of their ingroup (see ingroup bias). Furthermore, the positive social identity may be threatened by group members who deviate from a relevant group norm. To protect the positive group image, ingroup members derogate ingroup deviants more harshly than deviants of an outgroup (Marques, Abrams, Páez, & Hogg, 2001).^[12] In addition, Eidelman and Biernat (2003)^[13] have shown that personal identities are also threatened through deviant ingroup members. They argue that devaluation of deviant members is an individual response of interpersonal differentiation. Khan and Lambert (1998)^[8] suggest that cognitive processes like assimilation and contrast, which may underline the effect, should be examined.

Limitations[link]

Even though there is widely support for the black sheep effect, the opposite pattern has been found, for example, that White participants judge unqualified Black targets more negative than comparable White targets (e.g., Feldman, 1972;^[14] Linville & Jones, 1980).^[15] Consequentely, there are several factors which influence the black sheep effect. For instance, the higher the identification with the ingroup, and the higher the entitativity of the ingroup, the more the black sheep effect emerges (e.g., Castano, Paladino, Coull, & Yzerbyt, 2002;^[16] Lewis & Sherman, 2010).^[17] Even situational factors explaining the deviance have an influence whether the black sheep effect occurs (De Cremer & Vanbeselaere, 1999).^[18]

See also[link]

Look up black sheep in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Black swan theory
• Glossary of sheep husbandry: see entry for "black wool".
• Scapegoat
• The Ugly Duckling

References[link]

External links[link]

• Exploration of the etymology of the phrase "black sheep of the family"
• "The black sheep effect: Judgmental extremity towards ingroup members in inter-and intra-group situations". European Journal of Social Psychology (Science Direct) 18 (3): 287–292. DOI:10.1002/ejsp.2420180308. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00221031. Retrieved 2008-01-04. 

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (July 2009)

Natalie Merchant
In concert in Maryhill, Washington in 2010
Background information
Birth name	Natalie Anne Merchant
Born	(1963-10-26) October 26, 1963 (age 48) Jamestown, New York, USA
Occupations	Musician, Songwriter
Instruments	Vocals, keyboard, piano
Years active	1981–present
Labels	Elektra Records Myth America Records Nonesuch/Elektra Records
Associated acts	10,000 Maniacs Michael Stipe
Website	NatalieMerchant.com

Natalie Anne Merchant (born October 26, 1963) is an American singer-songwriter and musician. She joined the alternative rock band 10,000 Maniacs in 1981 and left it to begin her solo career in 1993.

Early life[link]

Natalie Merchant was born October 26, 1963, in Jamestown, New York, the third of four children of Anthony and Ann Merchant. Her paternal grandfather, who played the accordion, mandolin and guitar, emigrated to the United States from Sicily; his surname was "Mercante" before it was Anglicized.^[1] Her maternal grandfather, a cartoonist, piano tuner and member of a barbershop quartet, was Irish.^[1] Her parents divorced when she was eight years old, and her mother later remarried.^[2]

When Merchant was a child, her mother listened to music (The Beatles, Al Green, Aretha Franklin)^[3] and encouraged her children to study music, but she wouldn't allow TV after Natalie was 12. "I was taken to the symphony a lot because my mother loved classical music. But I was dragged to see Styx when I was 12. We had to drive 100 miles to Buffalo, New York. Someone threw up next to me and people were smoking pot. It was terrifying. I remember Styx had a white piano which rose out of the stage. It was awe-inspiring and inspirational."^[4] "She [her mother] had show tunes, she had the soundtrack from West Side Story and South Pacific. And then eventually... she'd always liked classical music and then she married a jazz musician, so that's the kind of music I was into. I never really had friends who sat around and listened to the stereo and said 'hey, listen to this one', so I'd never even heard of who Bob Dylan was until I was 18."^[5] During 1988–1989, Natalie claimed she still didn't have a TV: "I grew up in a house where no one watched the news on television and no one read the paper. I've been discovering these things as I get older, and the news has affected me more than it ever has before."^[6]

"A suicidal high school dropout", Merchant started working in a health food store at 16.^[2] She considered a career in special education following her taking part in a handicapped children's summer program. But eventually in 1981 she started singing for a band called Still Life, which was to become 10,000 Maniacs.^[2]

Career[link]

10,000 Maniacs[link]

The period featuring Merchant was the most critically and commercially successful for 10,000 Maniacs. She is seen here with Rob Buck and the band during that time.

Merchant was lead singer and primary lyricist for 10,000 Maniacs, joining in its infancy in 1981 while she was a student at Jamestown Community College. The group recorded their album Human Conflict Number Five and performed a corresponding Music video at The Hotel Franklin and at Group W Westinghouse studios (Jamestown, New York) in 1982. Merchant sang lead vocals, and later played the piano as well, for 10,000 Maniacs for seven studio albums. In 1993 she announced that she was leaving the group.^[7]

[edit] Tigerlily (1995)

Merchant has said in interviews that after her split with 10,000 Maniacs she was so eager to begin writing her own material that she went home that very day and composed the song "I May Know the Word", which was originally meant to appear on the soundtrack to the Tom Hanks movie Philadelphia. The song was eventually cut from the soundtrack, but it would go on to appear on Merchant's debut solo album, Tigerlily, which was released on the Elektra label in 1995. Merchant chose to name the album Tigerlily as she felt it captured the feel of the album, which she described as both "fierce" and "delicate".

The third song on the album, "Beloved Wife", was featured as the first song in the trailer for the movie Message in a Bottle.

Seeking creative control, Merchant chose to fund Tigerlily herself, refusing the advance from the record company. She also wanted to work with a core-group of young musicians who she felt would be enthusiastic about the music. The group would consist of guitarist Jennifer Turner, bassist Barrie Maguire, and former-Wallflower and eventual boyfriend to Merchant, Peter Yanowitz, who played drums on the album and who continued to do so with Merchant until their abrupt split in 2000.

Tigerlily was a critical and commercial success, spawning her first top-ten hit in the single "Carnival", and achieving top-40 success with subsequent singles "Wonder" and "Jealousy". The album would go on to sell over 5 million copies, and continues to be Merchant’s most successful album to date. Merchant did extensive touring for the album and made numerous television appearances, including performances on SNL, The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and all late-night talk shows. The media's immediate and critical impact on culture and cultural icons was of particular interest to Merchant. In "River", a song from Tigerlily, Merchant defends River Phoenix as she castigates the media for systematically dissecting the child actor after his death. Much of their emphasis was on Phoenix' suspected drug-using lifestyle. In "River," Merchant asks, "Why don't you let him be / Give his mother and father peace." Merchant's anger is later replaced with quiet reflection, asking, "It was such a nightmare raving, 'How could we save him from himself?'"^[8]

[edit] Ophelia (1998–1999)

Three years passed before Merchant would release her second solo effort, Ophelia. While Tigerlily contained a lot of sparse instrumentation, the music on Ophelia featured plenty of lush symphonic arrangements composed and conducted by British composer Gavin Bryars. Merchant treated the recording of Ophelia as a series of workshops, where she would invite various musicians she had met over the years into her home studio to collaborate and record. In the end, 30 different musicians featured on the album, among them Brand New Heavies frontwoman N'Dea Davenport (with whom she duets on the song Break Your Heart), famed trumpet player Chris Botti, and the husband and wife duo, Don and Karen Peris, from the band The Innocence Mission.

While Ophelia is not a concept record in the traditional sense, the album-cycle saw Merchant flexing her creative muscles in surprising ways. The name of the album and the title track are a literary reference to Shakespeare's Ophelia, who in the play Hamlet becomes mad and eventually commits suicide when Hamlet remains non-committal and lost in himself. Merchant's Ophelia describes a series of women throughout time—women who dared question the patriarchal status quo and who were often castigated for doing so—and is a cry for women's rights and for more understanding of female archetypes beyond the scope of the "mother" and the "whore", both of which severely limit women and attempt to turn them into little more than chattel. The portrayal of the women in the song is a tribute to the non-traditional, the "too smart for her own good" type of woman who is often misunderstood by society. As a lyric to the title song cries: "Your common sense, your best defense, was wasted and in vain!" A reflection of women driven mad by social limitations, Natalie's tribute described Ophelia as being at once a "novice carmelite," a "suffragette," a "circus queen," a "demigoddess" and a "mafia courtesan." The album sleeve saw Merchant pictured in colorful and ornate costumes as each of these different characters. As a companion to the album, she also released a film where she portrays each of these different characters, with voice-overs used for the "novice carmelite," the "sweetheart" and the "courtesan" as they are Spanish, German and Italian, respectively.

The first single off the album was a happy and uncharacteristically simple song called "Kind and Generous", which received massive airplay on VH1 and which solidified Merchant's role as a bona fide solo artist. That summer, Sarah McLachlan invited Merchant to co-headline the year's biggest music festival with her, Lilith Fair. The exposure from the tour helped the album reach Platinum status in just under a year, with subsequent singles "Break Your Heart" and "Life Is Sweet" receiving moderate airplay on adult contemporary stations. No video was filmed for the latter, however, with a clip from Merchant's appearance on VH1's Storytellers being used instead. She would also go on to appear on PBS' Sessions at West 54th and VH1's Hard Rock Live before the year's end. In 1998, Merchant also recorded George Gershwin's "But Not for Me" for the Red Hot Organization's compilation album Red Hot + Rhapsody, a tribute to George Gershwin, which raised money for various charities devoted to increasing AIDS awareness and fighting the disease.

The Ophelia tour ended in 1999 with the final few shows being performed and recorded on Broadway. The performance would be released as the album Natalie Merchant: Live in Concert with a companion video of the same name. The performance was notable in that it featured numerous covers including songs by David Bowie, Neil Young, and the Breton-Welsh singer-songwriter Katell Keineg.

[edit] American Folk Music Tour (2000) and Motherland (2001)

In 2000, Merchant embarked on a folk tour in the United States with many shows being supported by alt-country band Wilco.

Merchant's next studio album on the Elektra label was Motherland, released in 2001. Motherland saw Merchant at her most experimental musically. Motherland achieved Gold on the Billboard charts after debuting at No. 30 on the Billboard 200 and No. 13 on the Top Internet Albums of 2001, respectively. Rolling Stone favored this album with 3½ stars, and also noticed a difference in Merchant's voice, which was more deep and gritty than her previous albums. Singles that were released from Motherland were "Just Can't Last", "Build a Levee" and "Tell Yourself".

Merchant embarked on a year and a half world tour to promote Motherland. The first leg of the tour started in Minneapolis, Minnesota on October 17, 2001, trekking all over the United States, and then heading to Europe with some special acoustic shows in Europe. Merchant also participated in the Rock am Ring Festival and Rock im Park in 2002. In the summer of 2002, she was paired with Chris Isaak and both played at stadiums and arenas.

[edit] The House Carpenter's Daughter (2003)

Merchant at the piano in 2005

After her contract with Elektra expired in August 2002, Merchant decided not to sign with them again, or any other major label.^[9] Her next studio album, The House Carpenter's Daughter, was released in September 2003 on her own label, Myth America Records. To date this has been the only release on Myth America.

[edit] Leave Your Sleep (2010)

In October 2009, the official websites of Nonesuch Records and Natalie Merchant announced that she had signed with the label. Leave Your Sleep was released on April 13, 2010 ^[10] and is a compilation of five years of inspiration from a "conversation" with her daughter over the "first 6 years of her life." The album debuted on the Billboard Top 200 at No. 17, Billboard Folk Albums at No. 1, Amazon.com at No.1, and ITunes, No. 3. The album was co-produced by Grammy winning Andres Levin.

Merchant contributed a cover of Buddy Holly's "Learning the Game" to the tribute album Listen to Me: Buddy Holly, released September 6, 2011.

Personal life[link]

Merchant became known for her swirling style of dancing and her simple dress while performing with 10,000 Maniacs

In 2003, Merchant married Daniel de la Calle and had a daughter with him named Lucia. However, in an interview in 2012, she indicated that she is now divorced.^{[11] [12]} She likes gardening and painting.^[13] Some paintings can be seen at her official website.

She has been a vegetarian since 1980,^[14] save for the duration of her pregnancy when she temporarily resumed eating meat.^[11] In 1997, she said:

"The '60s aesthetic has never really appealed to me, the tie-dyed Deadhead running barefoot through the forest on LSD. I don't think that's really me. But I've been a vegetarian for 17 years and I consider myself an environmentalist in as much as I can be, considering the job that I have. I prefer living in the countryside rather than the city; I find it more sane and sustaining for myself..."^[15]

Discography[link]

With 10,000 Maniacs[link]

• Human Conflict Number Five (EP) (1982)
• Secrets of the I Ching (1983)
• The Wishing Chair (1985)
• In My Tribe (1987)
• Blind Man's Zoo (1989)
• Hope Chest: The Fredonia Recordings 1982-1983 (1990)
• Our Time in Eden (1992)
• MTV Unplugged (1993)
• Campfire Songs: The Popular, Obscure and Unknown Recordings (2004)

Solo[link]

• 1995: Tigerlily
• 1998: Ophelia
• 2001: Motherland
• 2003: The House Carpenter's Daughter
• 2005: Retrospective (1990 - 2005)
• 2010: Leave Your Sleep

Filmography[link]

Films[link]

Television[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Natalie Merchant

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Natalie Merchant

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (May 2012)

• Official website
• Natalie Merchant at the Open Directory Project
• Natalie Merchant at the Ectophile's Guide to Good Music
• Natalie Merchant at the Internet Movie Database
• Natalie Merchant discography at MusicBrainz
• Launch's page on Merchant
• Natalie Merchant interview at musicOMH