That’s the image I saw in my head every time I heard the song… until years later, when I became a teenager, it was dashed to the ground, and shattered upon being told that the song was about drug use. Somehow that tainted the song for me and made it less interesting… somehow mundane… not of a person’s own, pure imagination, but drug induced.

Today, my childhood image has been redeemed. I learned that the song actually came from a childhood drawing by John Lennon’s son Julian. You can see the drawing below. When John asked his son what the drawing was about, Julian said, “It’s Lucy in the sky with diamonds.” Lucy was Julian’s playmate in school.

The song “Lucy in the Song with Diamonds” was also influenced by Lewis Carroll. Paul McCartney said, “We did the whole thing like an Alice in Wonderland idea, being in a boat on the river, slowly drifting downstream with those great cellophane flowers towering over your head. Every so often it broke off and you saw Lucy with Diamonds all over the sky.”

That is a much more interesting origin of this song! What’s more, it lets me remember my original conception of it… and feel like that’s what it was really about… the feeling of the innocent, colorful, originality of childhood.

Oh happy day! To regain a childhood perspective!

Hattip: Steve Bunche’s Blog

*****
On a sadder note, the real Lucy Vodden (née O’Donnell), Julian’s playmate, recently passed away from Lupus at the age of 46.

It’s interesting that the specific wording of the proverb, “Good fences make good neighbors” is fairly modern. It comes from Robert Frost’s poem Mending Wall from 1914. The poem centers around this concept and questions whether it’s true or not. Here’s the poem…

Mending Wall

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, “Good fences make good neighbors”.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
“Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.” I could say “Elves” to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there,
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

Listen to an MP3 of Mending Wall as read by Alan Davis-Drake for LibriVox

Listen to a different MP3 of Mending Wall as read by Teresa Montgomery for Librivox

The narrator of the poem is annoyed by his neighbor’s insistence that there has to be a fence between them. If only his neighbor would get beyond his father’s beliefs – originating in an old proverb – and reconsider his thinking.

What’s ironic is that Frost coined the new wording of a proverb: “Good fences make good neighbors”, while questioning the very wisdom behind it!

Here you can hear someone doing a nice reading of it on YouTube…

Enjoy!

Mama Lisa

If you prefer to have it on your own computer, you can download A Collection of Nursery Rhymes from Internet Archive ! Just go to the link and choose “PDF” to download it.

Enjoy!

Mama Lisa

PS You can also come visit Mama Lisa’s House for a HUGE collection of Nursery Rhymes… many including illustrations, mp3s, midis and scores!

A Collection of Nursery Rhymes

A Gobolink is like an inkblot, but it’s made for fun, not for psychological analysis!  To make a gobolink, you drop a little ink on a sheet of white paper. Fold the paper in half and press down the ink on the two halves of the paper.  Then you open the paper and you have a unified image. (You’ll have a mirror image on each side of the folded paper.) 

You can see an old book of these images online at the Library of Congress.  It’s called Gobolinks, or Shadow-Pictures for Young and Old, by Ruth McEnery Stuart and Albert Bigelow Paine. (New York: The Century Co., 1896).  The authors wrote poems and limericks to go along with their gobolinks.

Here are a couple of my favorites from the book…

The Tail of Taddy PoleThere was a little polliwog
His name was Taddy Pole.
He lived within a little bog
Beside a crawfish hole.

And all the day did Taddy play,
Around a sunken log.
Until he lost his tail one day,
And then he was a frog.

*****

The Faithful Notes

An old guitar once broke its strings,
And all the musical notes took wings;
They hurried away to lands afar
But two of them stayed with the old guitar.

Enjoy!

Mama Lisa

MOTHER GOOSE’S MAY PARTY.

BY AGNES CARR.

It was May-day, and the sun popped out of bed early that morning to wake up the little birds and flowers, that they might clear their throats, and wash their bright faces in dew, by the time the old woman had swept the cobwebs from the sky, and left a beautiful blue roof over Gooseneck village; for they knew it was the 1st of May, and that dear old Mother Goose, who taught the Kindergarten, or infant school, was going with all her little scholars to have a May party under the trees in the merry green wood.

And the children knew it too, and they were all on hand bright and early- Tommy Green and Johnny Stout, Humpty Dumpty and Little Bo-peep, Jack and Jill, Little Boy Blue in a brand-new suit of clothes, and Goldilocks with her yellow hair flying in the wind, Tom, the Piper’s son, and poor Simple Simon, the dunce of the school, with many others that we have known and loved-and all brought baskets filled with good things for their dinner.

"Oh, won’t we have fun!" said Margery Daw to Jacky Horner. "I hope you have got something nice in that big basket of yours."

"Yes, indeed," said Jack. "Cook made me a lovely pie, and stuffed it just full of plums. I will try and pull one out for you;" and he lifted up the napkin over the basket, and was trying to break a hole in the pie-crust, when Mother Goose came in, and seeing him, said, "Here, here, Master Jack! keep your fingers out of the pie. I never saw such a boy. He sticks his thumb into everything, from Christmas pies to inkstands."

"Oh, Mother Goose, do let us start!" shouted the children.

"Yes, yes, my dears, very soon. We are only waiting for Contrary Mary. I have sent Nimble Dick for her; and here they come now."

Sure enough, there was heard a jingling of bells, and in danced Mary, quite contrary, with her fingers covered with rings, and her apron filled with flowers from her garden, with which to make a wreath for the May-Queen.

And now they all started, walking two and two, with Mother Goose at the head, holding the youngest scholar, Baby Bunting, tight by the hand, for fear he should fall down and tear his new rabbit-skin overcoat, while Tom, the Piper’s son, played "Over the hills and far away" on his pipe, and all the little folks danced and skipped along to the gay tune.

When they reached the pleasant wood, they were all glad to sit down on the green moss and rest awhile; and Mother Goose said, "The first thing is to choose a May-Queen: now who shall it be?"

"Goldilocks!" "Goldilocks!" shouted the children, for they all loved the dear little girl with pretty hair and sweet blue eyes.

"Oh, no, no!" said Goldilocks, and she hid behind Tommy Tucker.

But they made her come out and sit on a throne formed of Miss Muffet’s tuffet, scattered over with wild violets and May-flowers, which grew all around; and Contrary Mary put a beautiful crown of "roses and lilies and daffadown-dillies" on her golden curls, and she looked just the dearest little May-Queen in all the world.

Then all the children joined hands, and danced round the throne, singing,

The little Queen then gave each one a flower, and let them kneel and kiss her tiny white hand; and then they scattered through the woods, and played "Oats, peas, beans," tag, and other games, until Little Boy Blue blew a blast on his horn, which meant "Come to dinner"; and when they all came running back at the call, they found Mother Goose had a table-cloth spread on the grass, and all the biscuits, cake, and fruit from their baskets set out on green leaves, while in the centre stood Jack Horner’s pie, a bowl of curds and whey that Miss Muffet brought, and a plate of strawberry tarts sent by the Queen of Hearts; and Jack and Jill were bringing a pail of nice cold water from the spring.

How hungry they all were, too, and how good everything tasted! while they had such a laugh at little Miss Muffet, who screamed and ran away when a great daddy-long-legs walked across the table.

They ended the feast with the plum pie, which the little Queen cut, and gave every one a piece; and they all said it was so nice. Jack Horner felt quite proud, and thought he was a bigger boy than ever.

After everything was eaten up, Margery Daw and Little Bo-peep washed the dishes, while Little Boy Blue went fast asleep under the fence, and Mother Goose told all the little ones a story, until the cobwebs began to come over the sky, and the sun whispered to the little birds and flowers it was time to shut their peepers for the night, when they started for home, Goldilocks the Queen riding in the middle of the procession on big John Stout’s shoulder; and when they bade their teacher a tired but happy good-night, all said they had had the nicest kind of a day, and hoped next year Mother Goose would give them another May party.

GOING HOME FROM THE PICNIC.-Drawn by Jessie Curtis.

This seems to be the order of characters in the illustration above: Simple Simon, Contrary Mary, Tommy Tucker, Little Bo-peep, Tommy Green or Johnny Stout, Humpty Dumpty, Nimble Dick holding Goldilocks, Little Boy Blue, Tom, the Piper’s son, Jack and Jill, and Mother Goose carrying Baby Bunting

Enjoy!

Mama Lisa

If anyone knows anything else about this text, please let us know in the comments below.

Mama Lisa