[Jimbee (OP)]

Because I have always wondered, about that and other so-called urban legends. Anyways, whether or not the following theory is true, is why I post it here. I'd love for you all to take that hypotheses apart.

Here:

Goosey goosey gander,
Whither shall I wander?
Upstairs and downstairs
And in my lady's chamber.
There I met an old man
Who wouldn't say his prayers,
So I took him by his left leg
And threw him down the stairs.

So goes a very old English nursery rhyme.

Anyways, it's interesting in a way. Because sometimes nursery rhymes have dark sides and original intentions behind them. Some people believe this otherwise harmless rhyme refers to the persecution of Roman Catholics beginning under Henry VIII and even continuing into the Commonwealth period under Oliver Cromwell ("Commonwealth" being an ironic term, because it is a synonym for our word "Republic" literally). The idea of Oliver Cromwell is further enforced by the fact that Cromwell's regime was a dictatorship. And troops and other paramilitary personnel in dictatorships often march using the infamous goose step (just look to the old Soviet Union for a classic example of this).

Yeah, Catholics risked execution for harboring priests back then. They were often hanged, and priests specifically were hanged, drawn and quartered for the deed. And when these priests were arrested (often old men, because the seminaries were all closed in England by then), they were often manhandled by the authorities ("threw him down the stairs...").

Here is an interesting article that goes into much of what I just said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goosey_Goosey_Gander

[alancalverd]

Are you suggesting that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is an independent republic pretending to be the remains of the British Empire, or that it is a dictatorship?

[set fair]

On holiday in the States Lulu points out of the car window, "Oh look the geese in America are black"
Father, a scientist, "Some of the geese in America are black"
Mother, a mathematician " In the US there is at least one goose, at least one side of which is dark"

[alancalverd]

Another version is

Politician:  The vast majority of Patagonian cows are black

Statistician: On a possibly unrepresentative sample one might initially assume half the cows in Patagonia are black

Physicist:  At 0830 I saw two bovine quadrupeds, one side of one of which was black.