My condolences, Bert, on the loss of your mother when you were a child.

I'm not sure children understand that life is so percarious. I hope that most children don't find this out at an early age. But if they do-I hope that they have people who help them through those difficult times.

I don't know if children play a great deal of attention to the deeper meaning of words in rhymes and songs. I think that children are most concerned about the rhythm of the words. I also think that children are concerned about singing or reciting the version of the song or rhyme that they learned [which they refer to as "the right words" to the song or rhyme}. And I think that they are concerned about the words making some kind of sense to them [which is why some unfamiliar words are changed to words that are more familiar through the process of folk etymology].

But I don't think that most children nowadays who recite rhymes or sing songs that mention death are concerned with the esoteric meaning of death. Maybe past generations of children also didn't concern themselves with the meaning of death. But maybe in the "olden days" children had more personal experiences with death.

The movement rhyme "Aunt Jenny Died" that I posted above appears to me to make fun of the occurance of death. Maybe death was taken lightly because it was such a heavy duty occurance. I don't know.
It was just something I wondered about.