Freaks Running Rampant

In the past eight months, I've memorized many children's songs. Most I've simply rekindled in my memory from my own childhood. Some make me laugh ("Ernie keep your cool, I'll teach you how to play the sax/I think I dig your problem--it's rubber and it quacks") and some make me positively tear up from nostalgia ("sing, sing a song, make it simple to last your whole life long").

But the only one that actually disturbs me is the old children's folk song called "Billy Boy," penned apparently at a time when pedophilia was no big issue. Billy Boy has "been to seek a wife, she's the joy of [his] life." However, each stanza ends with the line "she's a young thing and cannot leave her mother." Who is this Billy Boy and what does he want with a girl who is too young to leave the nest? When pressed about the exact age of this potential spouse in the third stanza, Billy Boy is very vague, answering only "three times six and four times seven, twenty-eight, and eleven" and of course follows that up by reminding us one more time that "she's a young thing and cannot leave her mother."

This reminds me of the Ringo Starr song "You're Sixteen" which I also find a bit disturbing. Anyone who is of the appropriate age to be dating a sixteen year old (i.e. someone also 16) wouldn't find the fact that his girlfriend is sixteen to be anything to sing an entire song about.