I’ve been reading a most enjoyable book by Albert Jack entitled “Pop goes the Weasel”, which gives the apparently “secret” meanings behind nursery rhymes. One of the chapters deals with “Round and round the mulberry bush”, and he included a lovely snippet as to why how red mulberries got their colour.
The story comes from Greek mythology, and is as follows:
Pyramus and Thisbe were neighbours. They were friends as children who fell in love as adults. Their parents disapproved and forbade them to see each other, but the lovers communicated secretly through a crack in the wall separating their houses. One night, they eloped and agreed to meet at a location marked by a white mulberry bush. Thisbe arrived first but while she was waiting for Pyramus , she was frightened away from their rendezvous point by a bloody-mouthed lion that had just finished a meal. She ranand hid in a nearby cave, but lost her cloak, which the lion mauled and bloodied.
Pyramus arrived shortly thereafter and seeing the bloody mouthed lion and the cloak, imagined the worst, and stabbed himself in his heart with his sword, overcome with grief at the death of his beloved. When Thisbe returned to the spot from her hiding place, she found him and realised what her foolish beau had done. She then stabbed herself, and their co-mingled blood sprayed the mulberry bush, changing it from white to red.
The European mulberry species has been red ever since.
I’m sure you’ve always puzzled over this, and now you have your answer…
