Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary
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Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary is an English nursery rhyme.
- Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary,
- How does your garden grow?
- With silver bells and cockleshells
- And pretty maids all in a row.
Explanations
Like many nursery rhymes, it has acquired spurious historical explanations. One is that it refers to Mary I of Scotland, with "how does your garden grow" referring to how she was doing controlling the country, "silver bells" referring to (Catholic) cathedral bells, "cockleshells" being an insult, and "pretty maids all in a row" referring both to how ugly Mary was compared to other women and to how she killed people: in rows and rows.
However, Mary Queen of Scots was accounted a great beauty. She was also not known for killing "rows and rows" of people, although one of her lovers, Darnley, was mixed up in a murder.
Another is that it refers to Mary I of England and her unpopular attempts to bring Roman Catholicism back to England, identifying the "cockle shells," for example, with the symbol of pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint James in Spain (Santiago de Compostella) and the "pretty maids all in a row" with nuns.
Opie and Opie remark that no proof has been found that the rhyme was known before the eighteenth century. It is also wise to note that Mary I of England and Mary I of Scotland were contemporaries.
References
- The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, Iona and Peter Opie