Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

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For other uses, see Mary Mary (disambiguation).
William Wallace Denslow's rendition of the poem, 1901
William Wallace Denslow's rendition of the poem, 1901
Mistress Mary, according to Denslow
Mistress Mary, according to Denslow

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary is an English nursery rhyme; an alternate first line is Mistress Mary, quite contrary.

Most common version:

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

The version from Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden is:

Mistress Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells, and cockle shells,
And marigolds all in a row.

Like many nursery rhymes, it has acquired various historical explanations. One is that it refers to Mary I of Scotland, with "how does your garden grow" referring to her reign, "silver bells" referring to (Catholic) cathedral bells, "cockleshells" insinuating that her husband cheated on her, and "pretty maids all in a row" referring to her babies that died.

Another is that it refers to Mary I of England and her attempts to restore England to Roman Catholicism, identifying the "cockle shells," for example, with the symbol of pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint James in Spain (Santiago de Compostela) and the "pretty maids all in a row" with nuns.

These explanations vary; it is identified with Mary I of England for roughly the same reasons as with her Scottish counterpart; her husband Phillip II of Spain was barely interested in her (hence the word "cockleshells"), the "How does your garden grow?" being a mockery of her womb (and her inability to produce heirs) or the common idea that England had become a Catholic vassal or "branch" of Spain and the Habsburgs, or a punning reference to her chief minister, Stephen Gardiner ("gardener"). "Quite contrary" could be a reference to her unsuccessful attempt to reverse church reforms made by her father Henry VIII and brother Edward VI. The "pretty maids all in a row" could be a reference to miscarriages as with the other Mary or her execution of Lady Jane Grey after coming to the throne. "Rows and rows" may refer to her infamous burnings and executions of Protestants.

Alternatively, capitalising on the Queen's portrayal by Whig historians as 'Bloody Mary', the "silver bells and cockle shells" referred to in the nursery rhyme could be colloquialisms for instruments of torture. The 'silver bells' may refer to thumbscrews, while the 'cockleshells' are thought to have been instruments of torture which were attached to the genitals. Finally, 'maids' might be a reference to 'maidens' which were early guillotine-like devices used to sever heads.

Still, some argue that no proof has been found that the rhyme was known before the eighteenth century, while Mary I of England and Mary I of Scotland were contemporaries in the sixteenth century. Some historians suggest that the song was invented by Protestants and Anglicans to mock the reign of both Marys at the time or long afterwards.

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Mary Mary is one of the many bizarre Fables imprisoned at the Golden Boughs Retirement Village in the comic Jack of Fables. Here she is depicted as looking like Marilyn Monroe, and disagrees with everything. Another character comments that if Mary Mary says that a scheme is sure to fail, it will inevitably succeed.

In the Jasper Fforde novel The Big Over Easy, Detective Sergeant Mary Mary joins the Nursery Crime division of the Reading, Berkshire police Department. She helps Detective Inspector Jack Spratt solve the murder of Humperdink ("Humpty" for short) Dumpty, a shady, womanizing businessman. She is not particularly "contrary", although at her first appearance she snaps at a uniformed policeman that she's "not a gardener" and has no idea how a potted plant should be watered. By her own admission, she "collects ex-boyfriends".

The saying "Mary Mary quite contrary" is taken from the above poem but has come to mean a person who contradicts out of habit or attitude rather than any real objections to the ideas being expressed.

In a Felix the Cat cartoon, Felix looks for bedtime literature to read to the intellectually-superior Poindexter. After rejecting a volume titled Advanced Thermodynamics, he finds a book of nursery rhymes which includes this variation:

Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your spectrum glow?
With sodium glare, in the ionosphare [!!]
And satellites all in a row.

(Felix puts the book down, commenting, "How can they do this to kids?")

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