Ring a Ring o' Roses

"Ring a Ring O'Roses" or "Ring Around the Rosey" is a nursery rhyme or children's song and game that first appeared in print in 1881 but may have been recited as early as the 1790s.

In the 1881 edition of Mother Goose it appears as:

Ring a ring o' roses,

A pocketful of posies.

Tisha! Tisha!

We all fall down.

In the UK, it is usually sung thus:

Ring a ring o'roses

A pocketful of posies

ah-tishoo,ah-tishoo (imitative of sneezing)

We all fall down.

Several other verses exist, although they are not as commonly known:

The King has sent his daughter

To fetch a pail of water

ah-tishoo, ah-tishoo

We all fall down.

The bird upon the steeple

Sits high above the people

ah-tishoo, ah-tishoo

We all fall down.

The cows are in the meadow

Lying fast asleep

ah-tishoo, ah-tishoo

We all get up again.

In the Midlands of the UK, a second verse is also added;

Ashes in the water, ... all the children stoop down and swish their hands on the floor

Ashes in the sea, ... continue the same motion

We all jump up,

With a one, two three! ... everyone jumps into the air with their hands up

In Ireland, it is usually sung thus:

Ring around the 'rosies

A pocketful of posies

ah-tishoo, ah-tishoo (imitative of sneezing)

We all fall down.

The most common variation of the song in the USA:

Ring around the rosey

Pocket full of posies

Ashes, ashes

They (or We) all fall down

In the Southern U.S. (most specifically, in Louisiana), it is usually sung as thus:

Ring around the rosey

Pocket full of posies

Upstairs, downstairs

We all fall down

In Australia, it is usually sung thus:

A ring around the rosies

A pocketful of posies

ah-tishoo, ah-tishoo (imitative of sneezing)

We all fall down, We all fall down.

Sometimes the third line is changed to:

Husha, husha

As opposed to ashes, ashes or a variation thereof.

Sometimes the verses are added:

Cows in the meadow

Eating buttercup

One step, two step

We all pop up

or:

Bringing up the posies

We all pop up!

Children stand in a circle holding hands and skipping in one direction, clockwise or counter-clockwise, as they sing the song. At the end of the last line, the group falls down into a heap.

Plague theory

A common theory is that the rhyme is somehow connected to the Great Plague of London in 1665, or perhaps earlier outbreaks of bubonic plague in England. However, there is no mention of the verses, nor written evidence of their existence, before 1881.

This idea, however, remains entrenched in the imagination of many. Detailed explanations have evolved to explain the different parts of the poem. For example, the first line has been said refer to the round red rash that would break out on the skin of plague victims. The second line's "pocket full of posies" would have been a pocket in the garment of a victim filled with something fragrant, such as flowers that aimed to conceal the smell from the sores and the dying people. A second creative explanation for this line is that it referred to the purported belief that fresh-smelling flowers, nosegays, and pomanders would purify the air around them thus warding off disease. A third possibility includes the idea that "posies" are derived from an Old English word for pus, in which case the pocket would be referring to the swelling sore.

"Ashes, ashes" would refer to when people alive and dead were gathered up into piles and lit on fire in a belief that burning the diseased bodies would not allow the disease to spread. Several alternate endings to the song exist, one being: "atishoo, atishoo, we all fall down", the theory is that this would refer to the fact that plague sufferers would suffer flu like symptoms before eventually succumbing to death (also, Pneumonic plague had flu like symptoms as well as acute coughing and sneezing). Another is "Husha, Husha, we all fall down.", the word "Husha" being the sound made from the last escaping breath of a dying person, which is generally described as being longer and more sustained than expected. "We all fall down" refers to the fact that everyone is dying. It is believed the American version "ashes, ashes, we all fall down" was an alteration of the original English version because it was more suited to local cultural preferences.

The first time the nursery rhyme was suggested to be plague related seems to be in 1961, James Leasor's book The Plague and the Fire. However, it is not clear whether Leasor concocted the plague interpretation on his own. The rhyme was first published in Kate Greenaway's Mother Goose or The Old Nursery Rhymes (1881), centuries after the plague swept Europe; and there is no evidence of an earlier version. Further, many early versions of the rhyme omit the lines used to support the Plague theory. Because of this, some have suspected this theory to be false. (see external links)

Appearances in popular culture

In the film V for Vendetta, the rhyme is graphically represented by a ring of children holding hands and dancing in a circle within a memorial for the casualties of a biological attack on the United Kingdom.

In the episode of Star Trek (the original series) named And The Kids Shall Lead (episode #60), when the children are found on Triacus with all their parents dead, they are holding hands and dancing in a circle while singing this song.

The rhyme was heavily featured in the very first serial of Sapphire and Steel, where it was used as a "trigger" to allow time to break through into the present day. Several characters who are mentioned in the rhyme, as well as a person who appears to have the plague, appear as ghosts.

In the episode "Dance of the Dead" of the Showtime show Masters of Horror, the rhyme was sung by children as a foreshadowing and emphasization for the biological warfare featured in the episode. In flashback sequences, a young girl remembers her birthday one year when "blitz" fell from the sky and ate away at the flesh of her friends.

The nu metal band Korn incorporated the song into one of their singles called "Shoots and Ladders" on their self-titled album. Dave Matthews of Dave Matthews Band also sings this rhyme as a verse in the song "Gravedigger" (Found on Some Devil, 2003.) A third musical reference is in Pink Floyd's track "Take It Back" from their 1994 The Division Bell album, which incorporates the rhyme.

On the episode "Dark Harvest" of the television show Invader Zim, the character of Miss Bitters devotes one of her classes to explaining the bubonic plague origins of the rhyme in a particularly menacing manner.

In the game Prey, during one level, the ghosts of possessed children sing the song in a sinister manner before attacking.

External links

• Site debunking the plague connection by Snopes.com