Nursery rhymes and fairy stories, sometimes bloody and cruel, whether fact or fiction, have been handed down, mainly by word of mouth over generations. Their original meaning has often been lost and amended over the ages. Many people will have heard that, Ring a Round of Rosies is probably based on the Great Plague in 1665 and that the Grand Old Duke of York refers to Prince Frederick’s disastrous campaign in Flanders in 1793/94. Old King Cole possibly refers to an Anglo Saxon King closely associated with the Romans in Colchester. It is said he had a beautiful daughter Helena who married Constantius, she was the mother of the Emperor Constantine, and eventually became Saint Helena. The Town of Colchester was originally Roman Camulodunum, and allegedly King Arthur’s Camelot. All of this is, of course, speculation, as is the story that Humpty Dumpty was a cannon manned by ‘one eyed’ Jack Thompson’ at the top of the castle walls of Colchester, during the 1648 Civil War siege. When it fell from the wall, the Royalists, (all the Kings Men) couldn’t put it back together.
