Lullabies are songs or rhymes with gentle words and rhythms that lull children to sleep. "Rock-a-Bye Baby" is a Mother Goose lullaby. Some of the lullabies have tunes so that a mother can sing them to her children.
These rhymes provide both amusement and education for children. There are rhymes that teach children to count, such as "One, two, buckle my shoe." The days of the week are the focus of "Solomon Grundy," and the number of days in each month feature in "Thirty Days Hath September." Tongue twisters help children pronounce words clearly and slowly. The most famous Mother Goose tongue twister is "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers."
Riddles present a question in rhyme form which the children must solve. One of the most famous Mother Goose riddles starts, "As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives."
Try this one:
"I have a little sister, they call her Peep, Peep;
She wades the waters deep, deep, deep;
She climbs the mountains high, high, high;
Poor little creature, she has but one eye."
The answer is a star.
Clapping rhymes teach children rhythm and movement. " Pat-a-cake" requires children to clap their hands in a certain pattern in time as they speak the words of the rhyme. Rhymes such as "Jack and Jill" and "A Tisket a Tasket" contain actions that children can perform as they recite the verse.
Some Mother Goose rhymes refer to actual historical events. "Ring a Ring o Rosies" refers to the bubonic plague in which one of the symptoms was a red ring of sores around a person's neck. The line "A pocketful of posies" in this rhyme tells of the bunch of flowers that people kept in their pockets to ward off the plague. "Remember Remember the fifth of November" is an account of Guy Fawkes' failed attempt to blow up the English Parliament buildings in 1605.