So I was all ready to write up a humorous screed this morning about how Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater is clearly a story about a man who murders his wife and that we shouldn’t be reading such things to children, when I discovered that it actually is.
Older variations of the rhyme feature men who shove their unwanted wives up chimneys, or let mice eat them to death. Shoving her into a pumpkin is almost tame by comparison.
Honestly, with all this scholarship it’s getting so you can’t make a simple joke about folklore anymore!
