Ring-a-ring of roses,
A pocketful of posies;
A-tishoo! A-tishoo!
We all fall down.
Everyone knows that this nursery rhyme has its origins in
the Plague – either the Great Plague that afflicted London in 1665 or the much
wider Black Death of the 1340s. The first and third lines describe two of the
symptoms of the disease, the second refers to the practice of carrying
pockets-full of sweet-smelling flowers to ward off infection, and the final
line is a clear reference to the inevitable outcome.
Unfortunately, this is a case of “everyone has got it
wrong”! There is no evidence that bubonic plague involved either red rings on
the skin or sneezing as early symptoms, nor that anyone believed that they
could ward off the disease by smelling flowers.
Another problem with this explanation is that there is no
record of the rhyme existing any earlier than the 19th century, and
that would surely not be the case if it had its origins in either plague
outbreak mentioned above.
Thirdly, the version quoted above is not the only one that
has appeared in print, and various alternatives have completely different
offerings for some of the lines that have no connotations to any supposed
plague symptoms or results.
The conclusion must therefore be that this is a simple children’s
game that uses easily remembered words that children can recite and link to the
actions of walking in a circle, sneezing and falling over.
© John Welford
