As nauseatingly wholesome as children's songs may seem, sometimes there are corpses buried under those mountains of spaghetti, and axe murderers behind those rainbows. Whether that's a case of the original lyrics being intentionally omitted, or just a complete misunderstanding of what the song was trying to say in the first place, there's something a little disconcerting about hearing third graders sing these songs in their pure little voices while knowing what they're really about ...

5 "London Bridge Is Falling Down"

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

How We Know It Today:

London Bridge is falling down,

Falling down, falling down.

London Bridge is falling down,

My fair lady.

We suppose it's pretty messed up to write an ode to shoddy civil engineering, but really, how bad could this be?



Aside from all those suicides, nothing sinister ever happens on bridges!

What It Actually Means:

It's a song about starving children to death.

There have been a lot of theories over the years as to what the collapse of the London Bridge in the song means. Some believe that it refers to Viking attacks back in the 11th century. As no documented records of such an attack on the bridge exist, however, we'll instead focus on a different interpretation: immurement. Don't know the term? Well then, here's a new reason to drink in the morning!

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

Immurement is the practice of entombing someone within a structure, where they slowly die from lack of food and water (not to be confused with being buried alive, where you mercifully just get to suffocate). The tradition is centuries old, based on the belief that such sacrifices would ensure the stability of the structures in which people were imprisoned.

It was thought too awful to be anything but myth, but some documented cases have been recorded: They turned up a slew of bodies within the walls of several old European structures, including castles, churches and, in the case of Bremen, Germany, at least one bridge. In other words, London Bridge is most likely a reference to the sacrifice of a child within the bridge's base to serve as an "eternal watchman."



Murdering children was the duct tape of the ancient world.

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

Still not convinced? There's a game that children often play while singing this little ditty, where two of them join hands to form an arch, and the others take turns running underneath until the end of the song, at which point the hands are lowered and the last child is captured within. That's right: Your kids are out there on the playground right now, practicing ritual sacrifice.