Is it truth that the Nursery Ryhmes of "Three Blind Mice" has dreadful meaning?

Question

I had friend who told me that the "three blind mices" has a hidden message or a history behind it's simple words. But he didn't yet give what it was. Could tell if it's truth that it has a deeper meaning not just a nursery rhyme but something else.

Answer 1

Henry VIII rebelled against Roman Catholicism when the Pope would not annul his marriage to Catherine of Arragon and he made England a Protestant country. However when his daughter Mary (daughter of Catherine of Arragon) became Queen after his death, she was a staunch Catholic and persecuted Protestants.

She is also the subject of the nursery rhyme "Mary Mary Quite Contrary, How does your garden grow?" which concerns her attempts to return England to Catholicism.

To this end, she had almost three hundred religious dissenters executed; as a consequence, she became known as Bloody Mary.

Mary I is the farmer's wife in the rhyme, the farmer is her husband Phillip II of Spain (they owned considerable estates). The three blind mice were three of the Protestant bishops she had executed.

Numerous Protestant leaders were executed in the so-called Marian Persecutions. The first to die were John Rogers (4 February 1555), Laurence Saunders (8 February 1555), Rowland Taylor (9 February 1555), and John Hooper, the Bishop of Gloucester (9 February 1555). The persecution lasted for almost four years.

During Mary's five-year reign, 283 individuals were burnt at the stake, twice as many as had suffered the same fate during the previous century-and-a-half of English history, and at a greater rate than under the contemporary Spanish Inquisition.

Several notable clerics were executed; among them were the former Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer, the former Bishop of London Nicholas Ridley and the reformist Hugh Latimer. (These three are generally thought to be the 3 blind mice of the rhyme),

John Foxe vilified her in his Book of Martyrs. Spanish ambassadors were apparently aghast at how the English reviled her and at the jubilation and celebration of the people upon her death.

She was succeeded by her Protestant half-sister Elizabeth I who reigned for 45 years.

Answer 2

Meaning Of Three Blind Mice

Answer 3

Three blind mice. Three blind mice.
See how they run. See how they run.
They all ran after the farmer's wife
Who cut off their tails with a carving knife.
Did you ever see such a thing in your life
As three blind mice?

Well, the nursery rhyme is horrible because the farmer's wife cut their tails off.

A legend says this song was written because Queen Mary I of England executed 3 Protestant bishops.

Answer 4

Supposedly Three Blind Mice refers to three protestant bishops that HRM Mary I had killed. This has never been proven and some sholars suggest that this poem has been known since before the time of Mary I.

Many nursury rhymes to have sinister or dark meanings

Answer 5

"Three blind mice. Three blind mice.
See how they run. See how they run.
They all ran after the farmer's wife
Who cut off their tails with a carving knife.
Did you ever see such a thing in your life
As three blind mice?"

Hey...what's this all about "Bloody Mary" the Catholic Queen? i think we need not look for subliminal or historical meanings of this rhyme because it is literally dreadful. Who in their right mind would cut off mice tails and not kill them? And why would mice run after her?

Answer 6

Kaye P. You are on TV now...
★ http://www.osoq.com/funstuff/extra/extra04.asp?strName=Kaye_P.

Answer 7

i dont think so...