Like many people, I’d heard that the children’s song Ring Around the Rosy was about 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; 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: ‘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. A rosy rash, they allege, was a symptom of the plague, posies of herbs were carried as protection, sneezing was a final fatal symptom , and “all fall down” was exactly what happened.’ Another translation:Ring around the Rosie: people with the plague often had a bright rose-colored rash that people would see and make a large ring around them. A pocket full of posies: people without the plague often carried around posies, believing this would purify the air and protect them from getting ill. Ashes, Ashes: When people died, sometimes they would be burnt to ashes. Then those ashes would be put in a jar and buried. In this way, there was enough room in the graveyards for everyone. We all fall down: ‘falling down’ meant dying and many people did die. Variations of the same theory allow it to be applied to the American version of the rhyme and to medieval plagues. In its various forms, the interpretation has entered into popular culture and has been used elsewhere to make oblique reference to the plague.But folklore scholars regard the theory as baseless for several reasons:
- the late appearance of the explanation means that it has no tradition, only the value of its content;
- the symptoms described do not fit especially well with the Great Plague;
- 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);
- 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.
Maybe our descendants will explain that it was about the Swine Flu of 2009.