Edited by Azizi Powell
This is Part I of a three part pancocojams series about the "Ring Around The Rosies" children's rhymes and singing games.
This post debunks the theories that these rhymes and singing games have anything to do with the plague.
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2026/08/versions-of-rhyme-singing-game-ring.html for Part II of this pancocojams series. That post documents various pre-February 2005* versions of "Ring Around The Rosie." (*This date is prior to the launch of YouTube on the internet).
Click __ for Part III of this pancocojams series. That post showcases some YouTube videos of "Ring Around The Rosie" or similar titles.
The content of this post is presented for historical and folkloric purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post.
****
PANCOCOJAMS EDITOR'S NOTE
This pancocojams series on "Ring Around The Rosie" departs somewhat from the mission of this pancocojams blog which is to document and share examples of African American culture and other Black cultures around the world.
The words and/or performance activities of a number of early examples of many of the children's rhymes, singing games, and cheers that are showcased on pancocojams definitely or likely were created by Black people. However, other early examples of children's rhymes, singing games, and cheers that are found in this blog- such as early examples of "Ring Around The Rosie" likely or definitely weren't created by Black people.
As is the case with all of the rhymes and singing games that have been featured in this pancocojams blog, I'm focusing on "Ring Around The Rosie" because I'm interested in its history, and its folklore-particularly how it has changed overtime. Also, as is the case with all rhymes and singing games (and cheers) that are featured in this pancocojams blog, I'm interested in documenting socio-cultural information about those examples, and exploring the socio-cultural implications of those examples.
****
Pagan myth and folklore
In 1898, A Dictionary of British Folklore suggested that the
game may have pagan origins. This was based on a comparison in the Sheffield
Glossary with Jacob Grimm’s Deutsche Mythologie, which relates it to pagan
myths. It cites a passage that reads, "Gifted children of fortune have the
power to laugh roses, as Freyja wept gold," suggesting that the game’s
origins may involve pagan beings of light. Another interpretation is more
literal, proposing that it involved making a "ring" around roses and
ending with "all fall down" as a kind of curtsy.[27]
In 1892, the American writer Eugene Field wrote a poem
titled Teeny-Weeny, which specifically described fay folk playing
ring-a-rosie.[28]
According to Games and Songs of American Children, published
in 1883, the "rosie" was thought to refer to the French word for rose
tree, with children dancing and bowing to the person in the center.[7] Some
variations included literal falling down, which lessened the connection to the
game-rhyme's original form. In 1898, sneezing was also noted as a symbol with
superstitious and supernatural significance across various cultures.[27]
Great Plague
Since the Second World War, the rhyme has often been
associated with the Great Plague of 1665 in England or with earlier outbreaks
of the bubonic plague in England. However, interpreters of the rhyme before
World War II make no mention of this connection.[29] By 1951, this
interpretation had become widely accepted as an explanation for the rhyme’s
form that had become standard in the United Kingdom. Peter and Iona Opie,
leading authorities on nursery rhymes, observed:
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, and posies of herbs were carried as protection and to ward off
the smell of the disease. Sneezing or coughing was a final fatal symptom, and
"all fall down" was exactly what happened.[30][31]
The line Ashes, Ashes in colonial versions of the rhyme has been claimed to refer variously to cremation of bodies, the burning of victims' houses, or the blackening of skin due to the disease. This theory has been adapted to explain other versions of the rhyme.[32]
Folklore scholars consider the Great Plague explanation of the rhyme to be unfounded for several reasons. Firstly, the plague explanation did not emerge until the mid-twentieth century,[19] while the symptoms described do not align closely with those of the Great Plague.[31][33] The wide variety of forms makes it unlikely that the modern version is the most ancient one, and the words on which this interpretation is based are not present in many of the earliest records of the rhyme.[32][34] In addition, European and 19th-century versions of the rhyme suggest that this "fall" was not a literal falling down, but rather a curtsy or other bending movement that was common in other dramatic singing games.[35]”…
****
SELECTED COMMENTS FROM MUDCAT DISCUSSION THREAD ABOUT "RING AROUND THE ROSIE" AND THE BELIEF THAT IT REFERS TO THE PLAGUE"
These selected comments are numbered for referencing purposes only.
From
1. Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Ring-a-ring-of-roses
From: Joe Offer
Date: 08 May 00 - 05:27 PM
..."Traditional Ballad Index entry:
Ring Around the Rosie
DESCRIPTION: Singing game, with lyrics something like
"Ring around the rosie, A pocket full of posies, Ashes, ashes, We all fall
down."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1881 (_Kate Greenway's Mother Goose_,
according to Opie/Opie-TheSingingGame)
[…]
The origin of the song is unknown. Pagan myth or folklore were proposed as origins at the end of the 19th century. In the mid-20th-century, it was suggested that the song reflects the Great Plague or earlier outbreaks of bubonic plague in England, with the plague's rash, protective posies of herbs, symptoms of sneezing, and finally falling down dead. However, the symptoms do not align closely with the song; the explanation emerged centuries after the plague; and European and 19th-century versions of the song do not match the interpretation either.
[...]
Baring-Gould-AnnotatedMotherGoose notes that some have
connected this to the Great Plague, and Devlin, pp. 111-112, lists some of
those who have suggested it. But the Baring-Goulds also observe that this is a
very weak link, denied by most who have seriously studied the matter. The Opies
merely state that it goes back the *time* of the plague -- and offer no direct
proof even of that. The Opies also cite some possible non-English parallels;
those which are in languages I can read do not strike me as truly parallel. But
Devlin, pp. 115-116, also sees a strong parallel to the German version he
prints on p. 116.
Devlin, pp. 117-119, has details on how the plague idea came
to be popular in a very short span of time.
John Kelly, The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the
Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time, Harper Collins, 2005, pp.
20-21, has more explanation than most. According to him, the "ashes,
ashes" of the third line are a reference to the bruiseline purple blotches
which appeared on the bodies of some victims. These were known as "God's
tokens" because they indicated that the sufferer was soon to die. He does,
however, point out that this symptom is very rarely observed in modern plague.
So this is a pretty weak link. Plus many versions don't have the
"ashes" line. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.8
[…]
The Ballad Index Copyright 2024 by Robert B. Waltz and
David G. Engle."
**
2.
From: GUEST
Date: 08 May 00 - 05:41 PM
"I don't think any modern folklorist would accept any
association of the song with the plague. Steve Roud, Secretary of the Folklore
Society, London, specifically denounced that association several months ago on
a subscription newsgroup."
**
3. Subject: Ring around the rosy
From: Joe Offer
Date: 08 May 00 - 05:45 PM
..." The
invariable sneezing and falling down in modern English versions has given
would-be origin finders the opportunity to say that the rhyme dates back to the
days of 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. It would be more
delightful to recall the old belief that gifted children had the power to laugh
roses (Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie). The foreign and nineteenth-century
versions seem to show that the fall was originally a curtsy or other gracious
movement of a ring game (see I. and P. Opie, The Singing Game)."...
**
4. Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Ring-a-ring-of-roses
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 13 Mar 05 - 01:22 PM
****
From https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=49672&messages=214&page=1
1.Subject: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: GUEST,genie
Date: 18 Jul 02 - 04:51 PM
**
2. Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: DMcG
Date: 18 Jul 02 - 05:02 PM
**
3. Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 18 Jul 02 - 07:39 PM
**
4. Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 18 Jul 02 - 07:48 PM
"No; it isn't old enough for that. It's quite easy to consult
the Opie's Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (available in all good
libraries), and it's a constant puzzle to me why people rarely bother to do so,
preferring instead to repeat long-discredited Old Wives' Tales. First printed
in Britain in 1881, but apparantly known in Massachusetts around 1790; where it
had none of the later accretions which people nowadays imagine to refer to the
Black Death."
**
5. Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 18 Jul 02 - 09:09 PM
Ring a ring a rosie,
A bottle full of posie,
All the girls in our town,
Ring for little Josie
The Opies further comment
"The A-tishoo is notably absent here, as it is also in
other versions [William Wells Newell, Games and Songs of American Children,
1883] gives, in which the players squat or stoop rather than fall down:
Round the ring of roses,
Pots full of posies,
The one who stoops last
Shall tell whom she loves best.
They go on to dismiss fairly comprehensively the "Black
Death" myth, which appears to be a fanciful invention of the 20th century.
I think I've quoted them on the subject here before, so there's no need to
repeat it now. As I've said, the book is easily available. All of this doesn't
prove, as Greg rightly points out, that sneezes and falling down did not occur
in earlier versions; since, however, their first known appearance is of some 90
years after the first recorded forms of the rhyme, the balance of probability
is that they are, as I said (though I should have suggested) later
accretions. Whatever, there is no evidence of any kind that the rhyme is older
than the 18th century, unless further material has been unearthed since the
Opies wrote on the subject"
6.
From: GUEST,Nerd
Date: 19 Jul 02 - 03:38 PM
In the absence of any sort of old folk knowledge, we can
reasonably ask what evidence the mid twentieth century originators of the
plague idea had. First of all, the interpretation is based essentially on one
variant instead of on the huge range of texts that exist. Second, it proposes
meanings for some of the words (ashes referring to cremation, ring around the
rosie referring to a rash on the cheek) which are clever but not compelling.
Third, even if they were compelling, why a medieval plague and not a nineteenth
century outbreak of some disease?
All this suggests to a folklorist (which I am) that the
whole thing is a red herring. You have to assume that the one text being
analyzed retained all the oldest features (for which there is no evidence),
that this text contains cryptic refernces to disease (for which there is no
evidence) and that this disease was a very old plague (for which there is no
evidence). In the end, whether a folklorist believes a given interpretation or
not is based on evidence, and there is just no evidence of any kind that this
interpretation is correct, besides a clever correspondence between some
meanings of some of the words and some of the features of some diseases."
**
7. Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 19 Jul 02 - 05:35 PM
"
The thorough explanation by Philip Hiscock should be saved because the topic will undoubtedly come up again. I can't bring up any old threads today, but titles suggest that the subject has come up several times before."...
8.
From: masato sakurai
Date: 19 Jul 02 - 09:24 PM
(4) The "Real" Meaning of "Ring Around the
Rosie"
The story of "Ring around the Rosie" and the
Plague seems to be fairly widespread and diehard. A good number of websites
contend or imply that there was a relationship (e.g., Black Death). Jack
Maguire, in his Hopscotch, Hangman, Hot Potato, and Ha, Ha, Ha: A
Rulebook of Children's Games (Prentice Hall, 1990, p. 4), reiterates this
origin theory (of course, without evidence):
One of the grimmest stories of the origin of a game now
called Ring-Around-the-Rosy. The first line of this verse, originally
"Ring-a-ring o' roses," refers to the circular body rash that was an
early symptom of the Great Plague of London, 1665. The healthy attempted to
thwart the disease by carrying herbs ("A pocket full of posies"). In
the final stages of the disease, the victim would start sneezing violently
("A-tishoo! A-Tishoo!," later corrupted to "ashes! Ashes!").
Death followed quickly ("We all fall down").
It would be interesting to discuss it from another point of
view: "Why and how was the plague theory born in spite of nonexistence of
evidence?"."
**
9.
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Jul 02 - 09:32 PM
"
**
10. Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 19 Jul 02 - 10:19 PM
The interpretation of the rose tree and the circle of
players as a rash seems a difficult jump; it could have been stated by a
popular author or editor of a widely circulated paper or magazine. (Wasn't
there a tendency for Late Victorian-Edwardian authors to make illogical jumps
like that?). It seems to me that the shift to ashes! from hush or a-tishoo is
more likely a "guided" one than one evolved by children.
My (unsupported) suggestion is that there is an author or
editor in the woodpile, and we might be able to identify him. Children
certainly(?) did not evolve the plague theory."
**
11. Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 18 Jul 02 - 07:48 PM
..."It's quite easy to consult the Opie's Oxford
Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (available in all good libraries), and it's a
constant puzzle to me why people rarely bother to do so, preferring instead to
repeat long-discredited Old Wives' Tales. First printed in Britain in 1881, but
apparantly known in Massachusetts around 1790; where it had none of the later
accretions which people nowadays imagine to refer to the Black Death"
****
https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=49672&messages=214&page=2
12. Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: GUEST,adavis@truman.edu
Date: 20 Jul 02 - 12:35 AM
"
Best, Adam"
**
13. Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Nerd
Date: 20 Jul 02 - 01:16 AM
I agree with you and Masato, actually, that a very
interesting question is "why would the plague theory develop without
evidence." The answer, I think, has to do with how folklore has been
defined and studied, and (in the end) involves your second point about origins
and the folklorist.
"Folklore" (originally "folk-lore") was
coined as a "good Saxon compound" to replace the term "Popular
Antiquities." Antiquarians were interested in studying old stuff. Early
theorists of folklore held that the truly important meanings were almost never
known to the holder of the lore, but had to be ferreted out by the folklorist,
because scraps of lore were really the detritus of Mythological or Historical
materials that had been forgotten. Early folkorists thus had a vested interest
in connecting any scrap of lore they collected to Mythology or history, the
older the better. Of course, it's ironic that folklorists seeking origins
essentially ended up constructing "creation myths" of their own!
This attitude has long been discarded by folklorists in
academia, but there is still, I think, a fascination with old historical and
mythological origins among laypeople who have read some of the classic
conjectural works of folklore/myth scholarship, like Graves's The White Goddess
and Frazier's The Golden Bough. It is a form of interpretation that has a
sturdy tradition behind it, though it is mostly discarded by professionals
today. I would guess you need look no further than the enthusiastic readers of books
like those to find the source of the Plague interpretation.
As to why folklorists have largely given up studying origins
as such, I think it's because the kind of work that developed out of
origins-seeking, Historic-Geographic analysis, came to seem both fruitless and
pretty boring. After a long, extremely laborious process, the folklorist would
conclude "it appears my best guess is that the story of X originated in
India in the 7th Century, though I may be wrong about this." To which most
younger folklorists in the 1960s began to ask "so what?"
I agree that origins and conjecture can be interesting, but
in the end if I'm going to believe any origin story, I need some evidence."
**
14. Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 23 Jul 02 - 10:16 PM
As Masato said, "How and why was the plague theory born
in spite of the non-existence of evidence?" In other words, "Who done
it?" Since it is late 19th or early 20th century, the culprit(s) should be
identifiable."
**
15.
From: Nerd
Date: 24 Jul 02 - 01:22 AM
"
That's why the plague interpretation is so funny. It takes
things that have perfectly easy meanings in that context ("ring around the
rosy" or "ring a ring a roses" being an actual ring of children
dancing around an actual or imagined rosebush), and gives them new meanings to
suit a farfetched interpretation. The line with a-tishoo in it is just as
likely to be a nonsense syllable as a sneeze--and anyway, sneezing isn't a
symptom of the Black Death! Meanwhile, the things you'd expect to see in a song
describing the plague are absent--The actual prominent symptom was not a rash
on the cheek, but giant festering boils or buboes under the armpits and
elsewhere. Of course, it'd be tough to rhyme that..."
**
16.
From: IanC
Date: 24 Jul 02 - 05:00 AM
"
I played "ring a roses" (atishoo version) for
years as a child, without any assumptions that it was anything other than a
game with quite pretty words. Of course children are unlikely to know what
they're doing. There's bound to be a meaning to these things that the fools who
perform them can't possibly understand ...
By the way, we often seem to fall into simple dating traps
like assuming prior printing to imply earlier versions of things. For folk
activities, printing depends on collection. Something can go on for years and
not be collected. It won't be printed. Doesn't mean that it's later than
something that was printed centuries before. Concrete evidence can only ever
give a latest date. It can't be used as evidence of an earliest date.
;-)
Ian"
**
17.
From: masato sakurai
Date: 29 Jul 02 - 05:07 AM
"
"There cannot be much doubt that games like Buff and
Dump and Ring-a-Ring-o'-Roses, in which a laugh or a sneeze is the climax,
originated in this range of quaint notions as to the uncanny significance of
laughing and sneezing, and the betrayal, or the danger, or the deliverance,
which these things may indicate." (p. 98)
Although Urban Legend Reference Pages: Ring Around the
Rosie says "[T]he first known mention of a plague interpretation of
'Ring Around the Rosie' didn't show up until James Leasor published The Plague
and the Fire in 1961," the date seems to have been earlier, because the
Opies apparently had tried to debunk the theory in The Dictionary (first
published in 1951). Later in 1985, they devoted a few pages to this problem in The
Singing Game (Oxford, pp. 220-227):
"This story [of its being a relic of the Great Plague
of 1665] has obtained such circulation in recent years it can itself be said to
be epidemic. Thus the mass-circulation Radio Times, 7 June 1973, gave it a
double-page headline, to advertise a documentary programme on the
plague-village of Eyam (although a 1909 guide book to Eyam does not mention the
rhyme); lectures at medical schools have repeated it as fact both in Britain
and America (men of science are notoriously incautious when pronouncing on
material in disciplines other than their own); and we ourselves have had to
listen so often to this interpretation we are reluctant to go out of the house.
Those infected with the belief seem unperturbed that no reference to 'Ring a
Ring o' Roses' appears in Pepys's careful record of hearsay during the long
months of the Plague; or that Defoe's brilliant evocation in A Journal of the
Plague Year does not indicate that either sneezing or redness of spots was on
men's minds at that time; or that two recent studies, Philip Ziegler's The
Black Death (1969) and Professor J.F.D. Shrewsbury's History of the Bubonic
Plague in the British Isles (1970), give no support to the theory, unless,
that is, Thomas Vincent's observation in God's Terrible Voice in the City,
1666, is thought relevant, that roses were then neglected, since 'People dare
not offer them to their noses, lest with their sweet savour that which is
infectious should be attracted." (p. 221)
Their conclusion is: "Thus in 'Ring a Ring o' Roses' we
have, or so it seems, a spray from the great Continental tradition of May
games, that preserves the memory, however faintly, of the rose as the flower of
Cupid, the wreath of roses with which Aphrodite crowned her hair, the chaplet
of roses that a lover presented to his lady or with which, if she spurned
him--and he followed Ovid's advice--he adorned her gatepost, the emblem that
passed naturally into the social ceremony of the Middle Ages as in Chaucer's The
Romaunt of the Rose...." (p. 226)
~Masato"
18.
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 29 Jul 02 - 05:36 PM
"
One definitely stated the plague source: June Yolen's Mother
Goose Songbook, 1992, Carleton House. The others had no comment.
I couldn't check the books for the smallest children;
paperback and plastic, they were binned in no order and packaged in transparent
bags for easy pick-up by parents; it would have taken too much time and earned
me too many disaproving looks to have tried to go through them.
I remember when classics like Winnie the Pooh and the
Beatrix Potter and Burgess stories were
reprinted over and over. Now, they have
either been rewritten by Disney authors or dropped altogether."
19.
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 09:37 PM
**
20. Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Nerd
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 12:16 PM
"
No need to blame anyone. One of the nice things about this kind of claim is that it is itself folklore; it is folklore about folklore, which folklorists have called "metafolklore" and "oral literary criticism."
People become very attached to claims like this, partly
because of personal or local connections (eg. Eyam), and partly because there
is just something fulfilling about the thought that such a common nursery rhyme
is so old and so connected to historical events of great importance. But why
blame anyone? Every single one of us is probably personally attached to at
least one proposition that happens to be wrong. This mistake is no worse than
many of mine!"
**
21. Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 12:50 PM
"
**
22. Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: masato sakurai
Date: 14 Nov 02 - 09:05 AM
[Pancocojams Editor: Masato Sakurai cites the following Mudcat discussion thread]
Subject: RE: May Games, Rose, and Betley Window
From: Hester
Date: 14 Nov 02 - 05:43 PM
Here's a case in point. Masato quoted [if I'm following his citations correctly] the Opies in _The Singing Game_ (1985)
>>>Their conclusion is: "Thus in 'Ring a Ring o' Roses' we have, or so it seems, a spray from the great Continental tradition of May games, that preserves the memory, however faintly, of the rose as the flower of Cupid, the wreath of roses with which Aphrodite crowned her hair, the chaplet of roses that a lover presented to his lady or with which, if she spurned him--and he followed Ovid's advice--he adorned her gatepost, the emblem that passed naturally into the social ceremony of the Middle Ages as in Chaucer's The Romaunt of the Rose...." (p. 226)<<<
So, the Opies have just finished "debunking" the
Great Plague theory, but they replace it with their own aetiological
speculations, which, to be judgemental, seem even more romantic and
implausible.
The May Games are a particular interest of mine, since I
like to believe that all things folkloric revolve around Robin Hood. Well, the
May Games had definitely had nothing to do with Cupid or Aphrodite (that's just
classical allegory being churned out from the minds of the Opies
themselves). However, the May Queen did
wear a chaplet of flowers [at least in 19th century May Day revivals]. The
flower most clearly associated with May Day however, was not the rose, but the
hawthorn (i.e. the mayflower). May Games involved much of the same imagery as
May Day, but seemed to taken place generally a bit later, around Whitsun, and
thus sometimes even into June, when the rose may have in fact been in bloom.
And we might perhaps see a parallel between the ring dance
of the rhyme and the Morris, which had definitely become part of May Game
celebrations by 1559 [David Wiles, _Early Plays of Robin Hood_, 1981, p. 5-6).
The mid-15 century stained glass window at Betley depicts Morris Dancers around
a Maypole. And, indeed the "Lady" (often identified with Maid Marian)
holds a rose in her hand.
However, a rose does not appear to have been a key aspect of
the Morris and does not figure in any textual descriptions of the dance from
the 15th and 16th centuries, when the May Games were celebrated. Nor does a
rose appear in the 19th century Morris Dances recorded by Sharpe.
So, if we have a link between the May Games and Ring around the Rosie, it is one that involves a 300-year gap in the continuum, with the Betley window as the only piece of corroboratory evidence (that I'm aware of) for even this spurious association.
Cheers, Hester"
23.
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 14 Nov 02 - 06:16 PM
"
**
24. Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Hester
Date: 14 Nov 02 - 07:20 PM
Thanks for mentioning that May Day also had a revival in America, Q. I didn't realize that. (Was this also in the 19th century?)
I'm afraid your hypothetical college student wouldn't get
too far with that thesis topic, though, unless the maypoles used in the
American revival were somehow associated with roses.
Cheers, Hester"
**
25. Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 14 Nov 02 - 07:49 PM
****
https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=49672&messages=214&page=3
From: GUEST,Icehotchik771
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 03:57 PM
"
**
27. Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 04:17 PM
"W
1. No.
2. A small bunch of flowers."
**
28. Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: GUEST,chrisnlisa03
Date: 27 Aug 04 - 11:28 AM
"is there an exact definitive source to once and for all determine not only the right WORDS in the song....but where the origin of the song came from? especially since not everyone at the time of the black plague may not have had scholarly abilities."
**
29.
From: GUEST,MMario
Date: 27 Aug 04 - 11:43 AM
**
30. Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Nerd
Date: 27 Aug 04 - 11:45 AM
"
Beyond that, if you DO read the thread you'll find there is
no evidence for the rhyme being as old as the Plague. Therefore the scholarly
abilities of plague victims are irrelevant."
**
31. Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 27 Aug 04 - 12:46 PM
32. Subject: RE: Origins: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: GUEST,the unknown
Date: 20 Sep 04 - 09:16 AM
**
33. Subject: RE: Origins: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Nerd
Date: 20 Sep 04 - 02:30 PM
**
34. Subject: RE: Origins: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: BuckMulligan
Date: 15 Jul 06 - 12:33 PM
https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=49672&messages=214&page=4
35.
From: GUEST,Mira Butterfly
Date: 05 Dec 09 - 08:31 PM
Can anyone possibly help me with that?"
**
36. Subject: RE: Origins: Ring around the Rosy / Rosey
From: Jack Campin
Date: 05 Dec 09 - 08:45 PM
****
https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=49672&messages=214&page=5
37. Subject: RE: Origins: Ring around the Rosy / Rosey
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 29 Dec 09 - 06:12 AM
**
38. Subject: RE: Origins: Ring around the Rosy / Rosey
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 30 Dec 09 - 04:36 AM
"Further to my last post: Peter Opie went on to say that he
didn't think children would ever have wanted to play games about dying of the
plague — but they both looked a bit nonplussed, and simply replied "Good
question", when I asked them: what, then, of the 'Going to the
gas-chambers' game which they describe children in Auschwitz as having played,
in their 'Children's Games in Street and Playground'. For some reason that I
can't quite now recall I omitted this bit of our dialogue [which naturally I
taped thruout with their permission] from the Folk Review feature as it
eventually appeared (July 1974), so this is the first time I have published it.
I still have the tape - somewhere..."
**
39. Subject: RE: Origins: Ring around the Rosy / Rosey
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Dec 09 - 04:18 AM
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This concludes Part I of this pancocojams series.
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