Frere Jacques, Frere Jacques, the tigers are here

Cut them

If there’s one problem with adult poetry, it’s that it makes a little too much sense. I mean, most of the time. If you’re not Meng Jiao.

Nursery rhymes suffer no such limitations. Imagine you were a Chinese poet pondering an extremely catchy tune about waking up a lazy monk. The religious connotations might not work in your country, but the theme of waking someone up is quite universal, so you could always…

…ditch everything and make it about mutilated tigers running for their lives? Yes. That’s obviously the right solution.

两只老虎    
liǎng zhī lǎohǔ     

两只老虎，两只老虎，
liǎng zhī lǎohǔ  liǎng zhī lǎohǔ    
跑得快，跑得快！
pǎo de kuài  pǎo de kuài    
一只没有耳朵，
yì zhī méi yǒu ěrduo    
一只没有尾巴，
yì zhī méi yǒu wěiba   
真奇怪，真奇怪！
zhēn qíguài  zhēn qíguài    

TWO YOUNG TIGERS

Two young tigers, two young tigers,
Off they tear, off they tear!
No ears on this one,
No tail on that one,
Silly pair! Silly pair!

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Dall-e refused to believe that I really wanted a tiger missing body parts, so I had to carve them up myself using another AI picture editor. This was the best I could manage:

Here’s a typical kids TV version of the Chinese, with the obligatory rictus grin presenter: