Ring+Around+the+Rosies



toc =Common Belief= //[|Connections to the Bubonic Plague] (Black Death)? The words to the Ring around the rosy children's ring game have their origin in English history. The historical period dates back to the Great Plague of London in 1665 (bubonic plague) or even before when the first outbreak of the Plague hit England in the 1300's. The symptoms of the plague included a rosy red rash in the shape of a ring on the skin (Ring around the rosy). Pockets and pouches were filled with sweet smelling herbs ( or posies) which were carried due to the belief that the disease was transmitted by bad smells. The term "Ashes Ashes" refers to the cremation of the dead bodies! The death rate was over 60% and the plague was only halted by the Great Fire of London in 1666 which killed the rats which carried the disease which was transmitting via water sources. The English version of "Ring around the rosy" replaces Ashes with (A-tishoo, A-tishoo) as violent sneezing was another symptom of the disease.//

=Folklore= From [|Philip Hiscock], an Archivist at the Memorial University of Newfoundland Folklore and Language Archive. When I was a teenager in the sixties I first heard the attribution of great antiquity to "Ring Around the Rosie." It is a widely known verse, sung and acted out by small children. The words I used to sing were:

Ring around the rosie, Pocket full of posie; Ashes, ashes, We all fall down.

For me, it was a series of sounds, images, and action without much connecting meaning. As a teenager I heard that this piece of nonsense was actually a cryptic reference to, or a folk memory of the great plagues of the Middle Ages. This is the kind of "fact" which we all hear from time to time; those of us with good enough memories pull them out to dazzle others at parties or over coffee. A "fact" like this goes well with stories of curious African tribes and world record numbers of babies.

During the past twenty years I've heard it again and again. But like all folklore, the different versions do not always jibe with each other. The basic interpretation is that the first line refers to the rosie-red, round rashes which are supposed to be the first sign of plague. The second line refers to an alleged, superstitious method of warding off the disease by carrying or stuffing your pockets full of posies. The third line is difficult to interpret in my version ("Ashes, ashes"), but in many others it is clearly the sound of sneezing ("At-soo, at-soo" or even "A tissue! A tissue!"). The interpretive skills of the folk etymologizers aren't put to hard work to come up with the statement that, like the rosey rings, sneezing is a sign of plague. The last line is the clincher, for what else can we do once we've got the plague, but "All fall down," dead? Sometimes the plague referred to is the great London plague of 1665. More often the plague of 1347-50 is referred to; it is the one known as the Black Death. A few days ago I bought a book called Myth Information which purports to tell the truth about 590 pieces of common misinformation. The author claims that this rhyme is indeed a memory of that fourteenth century plague.

Last week a student researcher told me his version, or rather the version that he was investigating. According to it, the virus of the plague had two hosts in its life cycle -- man and the common rose. Early folk scientists noticed that the sign of the infestation in the rose was a coloured ring around the stem of the rose (first line). Posies, steeped into a herbal tea, were a folk medicine for the infestation (second line). The rest of the interpretation is more or less as above. It is a distinctly eighties or nineties version of the belief, including as it does a combination of scientific knowledge (alternation of hosts) and alternative medicine (herbalism).

It all sounds plausible -- except no one asked the folklorists about it. The fact is that unlike many other nursery rhymes, ones which we know are very old, there was no known version of "Ring-a-ring-a-rosie" (the usual name for it) before the late nineteenth century! It is a big leap of faith to suggest that it was circulating for five hundred years before anyone got around to writing it down. But, you might ask, why would anyone write it down anyway? The answer is that English antiquarians and folklorists have been bringing together, publishing and discussing traditional rhymes, songs, and stories for over three hundred years. It does seem odd that they might have missed this one.

I will remain skeptical of plague interpretations for a while yet. The more likely explanation is to be found in the religious ban on dancing among many Protestants in the nineteenth century, in Britain as well as here in North America. Adolescents found a way around the dancing ban with what was called in the United States the "play-party." Play-parties consisted of ring games which differed from square dances only in their name and their lack of musical accompaniment. They were hugely popular, and younger children got into the act, too. Some modern nursery games, particularly those which involve rings of children, derive from these play-party games. "Little Sally Saucer" (or "Sally Waters") is one of them, and "Ring Around the Rosie" seems to be another. The rings referred to in the rhymes are literally the rings formed by the playing children. "Ashes, ashes" probably comes from something like "Husha, husha" (another common variant) which refers to stopping the ring and falling silent. And the falling down refers to the jumble of bodies in that ring when they let go of each other and throw themselves into the circle. We mustn't look too closely for meaning -- we all know that children are not predisposed against making up and repeating nonsense.

=Snopes= Folklore rarely appears from nowhere, though. It usually has elements borrowed from other forms. Perhaps there was an earlier, partially revived rhyme which had some of the same elements. But the rhyme as we know it certainly does not date from the plague years. From [|snopes.com]:

Snopes and many other sites regard this simply as a myth.

=Wikipedia= [|Wikipedia] talks about when it became linked to the Plague: //Many have associated the poem with the Great Plague of London in 1665, or with earlier outbreaks of bubonic plague in England. Interpreters of the rhyme before World War II make no mention of this;[15] by 1951, however, it seems to have become well established as an explanation for the form of the rhyme that had become standard in Britain. Peter and Iona Opie remark[16]: ‘The invariable sneezing and falling down in modern English versions have given would-be origin finders the opportunity to say that the rhyme dates back to the Great Plague.//

And offer the reasons for it not being about the Plague: But folklore scholars regard the theory as baseless for several reasons:

1. the late appearance of the explanation means that it has no tradition, only the value of its content; 2. the symptoms described do not fit especially well with the Great Plague; 3. the great variety of forms make it unlikely that the modern form is the most ancient one, and the words on which the interpretation are based are not found in many of the earliest records of the rhyme (see above); 4. European and 19th century versions of the rhyme suggest that this 'fall' was not a literal falling down, but a curtsy or other form of bending movement that was common in other dramatic singing games.


 * What do you think?**