facts-i-just-made-up:

“Frère Jacques” is now a popular nursery rhyme, but its origins are actually as a warning about the seven deadly sins, written as seven verses about monks missing the rapture because they were indulging in vices. The song we know today is about the first brother Jacques, who being slothful, sleeps through the apocalypse.

The other brothers include Thomas (Wrath), who is busy fighting with a clerk; Louis (Gluttony), who is busy sneaking a second dessert; Hugo (Greed), who is stealing from a farmer; Clément (Envy) who is busy coveting a stronger mule; Quentin (Pride), who is busy smoking; and Martin (Lust), who is furiously masturbating at the time of the call to heaven. This verse in particular made the song inappropriate for children, and over the years it was cut down to just its first verse.

Another song, “Sœur Mary,” extols the virtues of seven nuns who are raptured for their good deeds. Originally sung to the same tune, this song oddly enough evolved over the years not into a nursery rhyme, but into Credence Clearwater Revival’s “Proud Mary.”

Most bizarre is the fate of a third French folk tune. The still popular “Alouetté,” about plucking a bird is most recently the basis for the Carcass song, “Feast on Dismembered Carnage.” This is not the only French origin for the music of Carcass, which has more recently covered Bizet’s “Carmen” under the name “Surgical Steel.”

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   Barff… thinking back to my dad singing this to me as a kid is now officially totally fucking creepy!

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