Although folklorists have been collecting and setting down in print bits of oral tradition such as nursery rhymes and fairy tales for hundreds of years, the earliest print appearance of "Ring Around the Rosie" did not occur until the publication of Kate Greenaway's Mother Goose or The Old Nursery Rhymes in 1881.Although some of the details of the plague offered in this putative "Ring Around the Rosie" explanation are reasonably accurate (sneezing was one of the symptoms of a form of the plague, for example, and some people did use flowers, incense, and perfumed oils to try to ward off the disease), the notion that they were behind the creation of this nursery rhyme is extremely implausible for a number of reasons: The plague first hit western Europe in 1347, and by 1350 it had killed nearly a third of the population. The "Black Plague" was the disease we call bubonic plague, spread by a bacillus usually carried by rodents and transmitted to humans by fleas. If "few people realize" that a "seemingly happy little nursery rhyme actually refers" to the Black Plague, so much the better, because the explanation presented above is apocryphal. Finally, "we all fall down" describes the many dead resulting from the disease. The practice of carrying flowers and placing them around the infected person for protection is described in the phrase, "a pocket full of posies." "Ashes" is a corruption or imitation of the sneezing sounds made by the infected person. The "ring around a rosie" refers to the round, red rash that is the first symptom of the disease. This nursery rhyme began about 1347 and derives from the not-so-delightful Black Plague, which killed over twenty-five million people in the fourteenth century. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down." Few people realize to what this seemingly happy little nursery rhyme actually refers. "Ring Around the Rosie" is simply a nursery rhyme of indefinite origin and no specific meaning, and someone, long after the fact, concocted an inventive "explanation" for its creation.Įvery child has happily joined hands with friends and recited the familiar nursery rhyme, "Ring around a rosie, a pocket full of posies.
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