Previously by Hannah Notess: Unconvincing Hymns of the Temperance Army
If the number of times I’ve read the book Sharing Time or found myself singing a Daniel Tiger song like “You’ve gotta try new food, ’cause it might taste goo-ood” is any indication, didactic stories and songs for children are never, ever going away. As parents and teachers, we just seem to want something cheesy, easy to remember, and ever so slightly passive-aggressive to pull out in those moments when we’re trying to convey, for the zillionth time, that biting your preschool friends is not living your best life. But given that pundits like to go on about character, and how we used to have it and now we don’t, I thought it might be interesting to go back and look at some of the Sunday-school songs Americans were using to help children grow in “character” when we were — supposedly — better at it. What, exactly, can we learn from these songs?
Animals that don’t even have hands work harder than you do.
If you’re sluggish, your garden will be a huge mess.
Butterflies are the worst. They don’t do anything and nobody likes them.
And poppies. No one likes them either.
Some people complain they have nothing to do. Some, I’m not saying who.
Stop fighting with your brothers and sisters, otherwise you might end up going at it with swords and clubs.
Here’s a fun idea: let’s learn to tell time and not be lazy.
Sure, go ahead and play sports instead of thinking about heaven and hell; see how that turns out.
Quit pestering the cows God made (with reading comprehension questions!).
Afraid of spiders, Ann? That’s funny, because they work harder than you do.
It’s just so wonderful that you’re quiet and calm throughout all your daily activities and also the transitions between them.
Planets are actually stars, and also stop asking so many questions.
Isn’t “hate the life of a drone” an incentive NOT to work???????
I think they’re talking specifically about drone bees, who apparently have no purpose in life. But we know better and their purpose is sex, lots of sex.
No, it’s like the Drones club, which is full of idle layabouts who accomplish nothing until one day they’re selected by powerful females for breeding purposes.
…………I have never wanted a piece of near-future speculative fiction so badly.
Especially because I imagine the trappings of the Diogenes club.
Too late. The Drones Club is the invention of PG Wodehouse who wrote the “Jeeves and Wooster” books and nearly a hundred more.
He was also a Broadway writer. His most famous song was “Bill”.
The performing flea of the English language.
And male bees are drones, so the “bee in his industry” would be a drone by default. Hello!
What the hell kind of planet is Herschel???
Uranus!
I thought Uranus was George
We call it Urectum now
One that I will happily move to! Doesn’t “Herschelonian” sound so much better than “Earthling”?
That’s the Greene farm, but it burnt down in Season 2.
Oh, so Herschel gets to be a planet now, but Pluto is still demoted?
Wow, this Jane Taylor character needs to chill out.
“If you’re sluggish, your garden will be a huge mess.”
Ok but it’s true though. (We are NOT going to talk about how the grass invading my garden is taller than the wee baby basils, we are not, I will dutifully pull out that grass just as soon as I get home, I am most a-certainly not going to throw myself on the couch in dismay and eat cookies.)
“throw myself on the couch in dismay and eat cookies” is what I do instead of cleaning and pretty much everything else.
“Quit pestering the cows God made (with reading comprehension questions!).”
Okay, now I think maybe all hymns should come with reading comprehension questions. Also, as a former children’s choir member, I am totally jealous that these kids got copies of their lyrics. We had to memorize our hymns. I remember feeling very resentful that the adult choir got to have hymnals while the children’s choir was made to memorize every song! We did have our miniature choir robes and stoles, so we looked really good, but still I felt like the grown-ups should be the ones having to memorize everything – after all, they had (presumably) been singing in church much longer than we had…
That’s because adults can’t be bullied/forced to memorise songs.
We had to memorize all of our music in my high school choir. Lo, these many years later, this serves me well in grownup church choir, because I’m one of 5 people actually watching the director.
It was probably a combination of figuring some kids would have a harder time reading than simply learning by ear, not wanting to shell out for extra copies, and adults generally having much more trouble with memorization than most kids.
I was putting together a “local flowers and their pollinators” activity and realized that we don’t have a lot of butterfly-adapted flowers. But I’ve SEEN butterflies on all sorts of flowers, why are they visiting flowers that aren’t adapted to pleasing butterflies?
Because butterflies are metal af and just take nectar from local flowers and dgaf about pollination. Butterflies are like an objectivist nightmare.
This is my favorite comment on the internet today. “Butterflies are like an objectivist nightmare.”
To MURDER and to DEATH?? Yeesh.
Right but siblings, you know?
In high school I volunteered at a Sunday school at my (former) catholic church. There was one song in particular that always struck me as supremely strange.
The passive aggressive lyrics were: Jesus loves even me.
I had to keep myself from laughing each time we sung it with the kids because they were SO SMALL like, what terrible sins have they possibly committed in their 5 years of life that would call that into question? Every time I remember that song I can’t help but laugh.
Part of my religious soul-searching as an adult involved reflecting upon my heavy-handed Catholic early childhood experiences and realizing that at age 4, I definitely felt like I had committed enough wrongs that God would never forgive me, and I should maybe die and start over.
Fast forward 20+ years = have converted to Judaism, am quite critical of how we talk to young people about morality, wrongdoing, and sin.
It’s so important to think about how kids & young people will take those kinds of things to heart!
I always went rogue with my “lessons” to the 3,4&5 year olds I was in charge of and made sure to focus on caring, sharing and being loving to one another rather than trying to focus on whatever reading was meant for the week.
I went all the way through the Catholic school system (in Canada) including University before I realized that no, this is not for me anymore. I do miss the ritual of it on occasion though.
Glad that you have found the faith that speaks to you and are carrying forward your more compassionate values in terms of what is shared with young people! It’s so important.
See, I read stuff like that, when I was little, as a reminder that no matter how small and unimportant a child might think she is, or how little adults might seem to regard her, nobody’s too small to matter to God.
“A bee in [HER] industry well understands, how useless the life of a drone [the male bee, whose only function is to breed and die, unlike the worker bees who are ALL FEMALE]”
This is particularly obnoxious since the author clearly demonstrates understanding in the very next line that worker ants are all female! Thank you, this has been today’s edition of Taking Affront at the Misgendering of Eusocial Insects in Popular Culture
More like misandBEE amiright???
omg would SO wear a shirt with that on it
My favorite daily analysis of popular culture!
Between this and the objectivist butterflies upthread I feel like insects have far more interesting philosophical lives than I ever imagined.
I just tweeted this ineloquently, spurred by the same offense, and I am maybe a little in love with your username.
Hey Butterflies are just doing what the Lord intended them to do, stop judging butterflies and pay attention to Your Own Work
“But he scarce reads his Bible, and never loves thinking” and “Who taught me betimes to love working and reading”
Wait as a woman does this apply to me? I feel like a number of women followed this advice and people got mad at them.
Quick clarification for the females:
Love thinking ABOUT YOUR BABIES AND HUSBAND AND HOW TOO MANY BOOKS WILL DRY UP YOUR UTERUS
Love working AT LIGHT EMBROIDERY and reading VERY LIGHT MATERIAL ABOUT MORALS AND NOT SCIENCE OR PHILOSOPHY OR EXCITING NOVELS WHICH WILL OVERHEAT YOUR UTERUS AND BRAIN
But love working AT SWEEPING THE SOOT FROM THE STAIRS STARTING AT THE TOP AND ENDING AT THE BOTTOM, BY WHICH TIME IT IS ALREADY DIRTY AT THE TOP AGAIN and SLAVING OVER A HOT STOVE WHICH PROVIDES YOUR FAMILY WITH FOOD AND HOT WATER TO BATHE, DON’T LET THAT FIRE BURN OUT (even if it ends up overheating your uterus and brain).
Wait, that’s all from 1900s House. That show really made an impact on me. (Why didn’t she keep her servant?? Aaaagh! That stupid stove!)
That’s the one Lewis Carroll parodied as Consider the Lobster, I think. The first verse isn’t here, but I remember the part beginning ‘I passed by his garden.’
‘Tis the voice of the lobster, I heard him declare/”You have baked me too brown, I must sugar my hair.” The first line of the original is ‘Tis the voice of the sluggard, I heard him complain/”You have waked me too long, I must slumber again.”
“A poor little spider is better than you”
I think Jane Eyre had this book as a kid.
“Mama, why won’t Father let me pick any of his poppies? He has ever so many fields of them.”
“They’re symbols of pride and vanity, and you must ignore them to teach them a lesson, and also, never speak of the poppy fields again.”
DO NOT GO INTO THE POPPY FIELDS. DO NOT LOOK AT THE POPPY FIELDS. DO NOT THINK ABOUT THE POPPY FIELDS. THE POPPY FIELDS ARE FORBIDDEN.
Honestly though Dorothy should have had this lesson. It would have saved her quite a bit of trouble.
DO NOT TAUNT THE POPPY FIELDS.
IF YOU GO DOWN TO THE POPPY FIELDS TODAY, YOU’RE IN FOR A BIG SURPRISE
A big sleep?
Invasion by various colonial powers at intervals over 150 years or so, actually.
Oh snap, that is a big surprise.
(Unreadaethel, now in this time of toast ending, let me shake your hand and say how much I’ve always enjoyed reading your comments.)
Let us pour into one another’s wounded bosoms the balm of sisterly consolation. This is going to be my go-to line for the next three weeks.
(by “wounded bosoms,” I mean “glasses,” and by “balm of sisterly consolation,” I mean “this very strong wine.”)
Lovely typefaces, I must say.
I definitely zipped right by the parenthesis and read it as “Quit pestering the cows God made with reading comprehension questions.” Clearly I should have pestered a few more cows with reading comprehension questions in my youth.
Cows don’t have time to read, they’re too busy making grass into milk, jeez.
I did the exact same thing and was really disappointed when my own reading comprehension skills kicked in.
Feeling a spark of recognition upon seeing the line “Birds in their little nests agree”, I hastened to Google and found that yes, indeed, it’s used in “Little Women”. Beth quotes it in the first chapter to break up a tiff between Jo and Amy.
I remembered that too, but hadn’t quite placed it. I was thinking of Eight Cousins, so, close!
I was thinking of Little House on the Prairie (whch a comment below seems to say is a place it crops up!).
Yes yes me tooooo! I remembered it was from Little Women, and in context of breaking up a tiff, but could not remember if Beth or Marmee had said it. I would have believed it of either. Meg, even, maybe.
It was also in “Laddie” by Gene Stratton Porter. The teacher coos “Birds in their little nests agreeeee,” and the narrator immediately shouts, “Ho, but they don’t! They fight like anything!” The teacher gets angry and smacks her.
I read it and thought, “THAT’S what Beth means! I never understood that!”
Wow, that ‘The Idler’ one is intense. And yet oddly relevant for today… (I’m looking at YOU coworker who watches 4 hours of reality TV a day then complains about being tired and never doing anything fun….)
“Birds in their little nests agree” was something Ma used to say to Laura and Mary all the time when they fought as children, if the books are to be believed.
Ugh. I disliked Ma’s Puritanical sanctimoniousness so much. You’re saying something important? Let me correct your grammar and posture. You’re doing chores? Let me tell you how to sweep and curb your exuberance. I feel like Laura’s character *had* to be strong to stand up to both Mary and Ma.
Yeah. Especially re-reading them as an adult in the 2000’s (not to mention reading Pioneer Woman), one of the pervasive themes of the whole series, intentionally or not, is Laura chafing against the expectations put upon her.
I always wonder if Ma was just better adapted to them, or if she found them just as awful and frustrating when she was younger.
I feel like I can kinda forgive Ma to some extent–she wasn’t trying to actively hurt Laura, but socialize her to the standards of the day.
Also can we talk about how when Laura was preparing to get married to Almanzo (like practically the DAY of), Ma whipped out two downer sayings at once — “Marry in haste, repent at leisure” and something about how marrying while wearing black was bad luck? I was thinking about that recently because it was so damn passive aggressive that it’s stuck with me ever since.
I mean I know she was just trying to impart wisdom with the whole marry in haste thing, BUT REALLY. You live out on the prairie in the middle of nowhere in the late 19th century, she’s been seeing this guy for a while and he’s been pretty good for your family, and you want her to get married someday. What the hell should they wait for?
Also, have you seen what Almanzo Wilder looked like? jussaying. https://www.google.com/search?q=almanzo+wilder&am…
Wow! Cannot blame Laura for her haste at all. Jump that boy before it’s too late!
When she came home with the ring on and her mom said something like, “I’m not sure if it’s him you love, or his horses” and Laura replied, “I couldn’t have one without the other.” I’ll never forget THAT line.
But yeah, they’d known each other for years, he helped save the lives of everyone in town at one point, and they’d been dating for a year! Yeah, she was young, but people tended to marry young back then, and it seems there was genuine affection between them.
To be fair, Almanzo was very like Pa in a lot of ways, and I bet Ma regretted marrying him sometimes. What seems exciting and impetuous when you’re dating is probably elss great when you’re married and have children and your husband decides to move to the middle of nowhere for no real reason.
“Marry in black, you’ll wish yourself back.” Which I think was actually advice not to remarry after being widowed, or not too soon after, so I don’t know what Ma was talking about, there.
And Beth says it to Jo and Amy in the first chapter of Little Women! Those books are so full of references to now forgotten earlier works, I frickin LOVE it when I spot one in the wild!
Me too!
I thought that was Miss (Eliza Jane) Wilder! and Laura squirmed because clearly that bitch knew nothing about birds.
It’s possible I’m mis-remembering!
That was the FIRST thing I flashed to.
I really hate this idea that people (or animals) have to be constantly laboring in order to justify their existence…
Right?! I actually had to stop reading halfway through because hearing that same message repeated over and over again was getting to me.
And the poor mule, camel, ox and horse in the song don’t bear those burdens or toil in the field by choice, you know!
…I am sad that the Toast is no longer accepting submissions, because this has reminded me of a book that was read to me as a child: der Struwwelpeter. It’s meant to Teach Children a Lesson in the best German tradition, namely by scaring the bejeezus out of them.
The story EVERYONE remembers is “the story of the thumb-sucker,” in English here: http://germanstories.vcu.edu/struwwel/daumen_e.ht…
The eponymous thumb-sucker gets his thumb CUT OFF by “A ROVING TAILOR” (wiki description, and it’s true that he pops out of nowhere).
My favorite story was “the very sad story with the matches,” translated into English here: http://germanstories.vcu.edu/struwwel/pauline_e.h…
which is, honestly, just as bad as it sounds. A girl plays with matches and burns up, and her two cats cry into their handkerchiefs (!) over the pile of ashes (with shoes and hairbows!!) that she becomes.
My grandmother, who in all other respects is the kindliest person I have ever met, is a huge proponent of this book and the reading of it to small children.
On a recent family vacation, my mother found copies (printed on thick children’s-book cardstock) with the original illustrations for sale in a small Austrian bookshop, and happily scooped up one each for herself, her siblings, her children, and her niece to replace my grandmother’s battered copy from 1935. My father was horrified, but unable to dissuade her.
My dad had a political parody of this, called Tricky Dick And His Pals, about Nixon, natch. I… Don’t remember much about it, but I liked reading it and pretending I thought it was funny, even though I probably didn’t get any of the references at the time.
……….huh. I wonder if one could write a Trump parody? hmmmmmm….
My mum has the English equivalent of that but the books were for reading comprehension, and some of the stories had morals like the tree that wished for golden leaves and they were so heavy they fell off and it died (moral: vanity will literally kill you) and the pancake which rolled away from the table (moral: um, attempting to avoid your inevitable devouring will result in worse, more humiliating devouring?)
And then there was the story about monsters coming in the night and stealing the dog away piece by piece which had no moral or conclusion it was just horrific
Is the conclusion to “people who don’t work for their money are the worst, and should be beaten with sticks” never “in conclusion, let us overthrow the rich” in this line of thought? Because that’s where I’d go with that.
That was where I went with it immediately, but I’m a known Wobbly.
Never mind about the bum on the rods… get rid of the bum on the plush!
“analysis”
There are an awful lot of planets in that list. What happened to them?
They all got demoted and are now hanging out in the backwater reaches of the Kuiper belt planning for the day when their erratic orbits allow them to crash headlong into the inner reaches of the solar system and smash all of the so-called “real” planets into smithereens.
Thanks! Good to know. Carry on, cryptoplanets.
They refused to work and idled away.
Juno, Seres, Pallas and Vesta became the asteroid belt, right? Right? Because they’re listed between Mars and Jupiter and I clearly have thought about this too much.
As a mother, I’m here for anything that ends with “and also stop asking so many questions”.
As a mother, I'm here for anything that ends with "and also stop asking so many questions".
hahahahahahahahahahahafuckCalvinism
I’m amazed at the common theme of sauntering as one of the greatest possible evils. And they didn’t even seem to be living in big cities where you might LITERALLY be killed for sauntering on a busy street!
Also, I thought it was interesting that home was where “sisters dwell and brothers meet” – because women stay at home all the time whereas men, even boys, have more license to be in and out and meet rather than just always be there in one place.
I have to say I got hung up on the ‘children of a freeborn race’ title like WTF BOOK what are you saying. I’ve been reading/watching a lot about slavery lately, though, so perhaps not strange that it gave such a visceral response.
absolutely – I had the same reaction!
These hymns seem to be all about Industry. Where’s the hymn about the lilies of the fields, that toil not, neither do they spin? I would sing that hymn. Memorise the words, even.
Lazy ass lilies
“Love Between Brothers and Sisters” is about internet commenters (Toasties excepted), isn’t it?
Honestly, my grandmother would have LOVED this. She was all about hymns, and frequently told us stories when we were growing up about a little boy just about our age who disobeyed his parents and died.
I heard so many stories like that (mostly at school) that I was always and am STILL sure I’m going to die and be a cautionary tale to children.
I know, I thought even the writer was inserting a coded protest against the drivel they're writing. Anyone else tried singing these? The melodies are incredibly dreary and none of the words scan. I feel sorry for the children for whom this was meant to be their leisure activity. Bring on PlayStation.
It's alright, dear. We're here if you want to have a little moment. We understand.
There's that bit when they're making a dress for Laura, and she realises for the first time that Ma hates sewing as much as she does.
“God made the cow to give nice milk, The horse for us to use” is a deeply alarming sentiment. Not everything revolves around you, humans.
Yes I remember that! I think everyone has those moments of realization about their parents… I remember my dad always thought his mom (my grandma) liked to cook (or at least didn't mind it), until she finally moved into a retirement home and was happy not to have to cook anymore. He said "but Mom, I never knew that you didn't like cooking!" And she was like, welllll, now you know.
This is a delightful collection, with an excellent title!
Brought back memories of the McGuffy readers I partly learned to read with. They are known for “Christian” content, though that didn’t affect me at all. The 19th century stories, including matchgirls etc., were exotic and engrossing. They are available for free downloading here http://www.learn-to-read-prince-george.com/McGuff…
Reminds me of this:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/27424/27424-h/2742…