How safe is safe?

"Mary, Mary, Quite contrary How does your garden grow?
With silver bells, and cockle shells, and pretty maids all in a row."

I have just found an old newspaper cutting which suggest that the Mary in question in thie well known nursery rhyme was Mary Tudor (the daughter of Henry V111 and Catherine of Aragon. The reference to the garden in the rhyme is an illusion to graveyards, which were bursting with those people who followed Preotestant faith during Bloody Mary's reign (1553-58). Silver bells and cockle shells were slang terms for instruments of torture while the "pretty maid" was a machine used to behead people.

I wish I had known this before teaching small children this nursery rhyme. It's quite gruesome. I always thought it was about a lovely english garden.


Here it is - to answer a query from yesterday. The news says you can fish, but today's sign says it is not advised. what would you do? I think I'll give it a miss