‘WATCH THE WALL MY DARLING, WHILE THE GENTLEMEN GO BY’ These days we are used to hearing about the darker side of nursery rhymes. We know that ‘Ring a Ring o’Roses’ is all about the plague, and that ‘Little Miss Muffet’ probably refers to a certain Dr Muffet who crushed up spiders and used them as medicine for his patients (including his daughter). But it’s sometimes a bit unnerving to read a poem that probably seemed quite charming in its original context, but then takes on a darker meaning in the 21st Century. ‘Smugglers’ Song’ by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1930) is a rhythmic and mysterious poem, where a child is told by a parent to face the wall and to ask no questions if she hears horses' hooves at midnight: Five and twenty ponies, Trotting through the dark — Brandy for the Parson, 'Baccy for the Clerk; Them that asks no questions isn't told a lie — Watch the wall, my darling,  While the Gentlemen go by Kipling’s smugglers are ‘gentlemen’, romantic figures bringing brandy...

  SISTERHOOD AND STRENGTH Scary sisters The Graeae, three sisters in Greek mythology, managed to survive by sharing one eye and one tooth, which is really rather impressive. Sadly it all went a bit downhill for them when Perseus stole the eye for blackmail purposes, but since the sisters’ names in translation are Dread, Horror and Alarm,  we needn’t really get too upset. Sisters as stock villains - wicked, ugly, conspiratorial, wild or seductive, regularly appear in literature, religion, history, show-business and folklore. The more wholesome sisters, the Marys and the Marthas, don’t get such good publicity. Cinderella certainly had a bad time with her sisters, but at least didn’t suffer the gruesome fate of Cordelia in ‘King Lear’, who had no support at all from her nasty sisters. Mary Tudor and Elizabeth 1 didn’t get on at all well; neither did Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Haviland.  The Weird Sisters definitely had it in for Macbeth, and ‘Whatever happened to Baby Jane?...