Memory Works in Mysterious Ways
In a recent post, I wrote about the way that silently reciting a poem from my childhood helped me cope with the claustrophobia of an MRI scan.
This led me down a garden path of curiosity driven research, as these things often do. Here’s what happened.
The poem I recited to myself from memory was Disobedience, by A.A. Milne. It starts,
James James
Morrison Morrison
Weatherby George Dupree
Took great
Care of his Mother,
Though he was only three.
James James Said to his Mother,
“Mother,” he said, said he;
“You must never go down
to the end of the town,
if you don’t go down with me.”
Of course, Mother did go down, went missing, and well … you’ll have to read the poem to find out what happened next.
I had vague memories of the rest of the poem, the plot and bits and pieces but not the remaining stanzas. So I looked it up.
And discovered that it was published in Milne’s book of nursery rhymes, When We Were Very…
