The Story Behind Ring-a Ring-a Roses

'Ring-a ring-a roses
A pocket full of posies
Husha! Husha!
We all fall down!’

Correct me if I’m wrong, but this is the version imprinted in my head from bygone days of playschool in India. This popular nursery rhyme has different versions in different places of the world.

In America for example, one of the version goes as:

‘Ring-a-round the rosie,
A pocket full of posies,
Ashes! Ashes!
We all fall down’

America is where ‘Ashes! Ashes!’ seemed to originate from instead of ‘Hush! Hush!’ or ‘Atishoo! Atishoo!’

In Britain:

‘Ring-a-ring o’ roses,
A pocket full of posies,
A-tishoo! A-tishoo!
We all fall down’

In Germany on the other hand, the translation loosely reads:

‘Ringed, ringed row. We are three children, sitting under an elder bush. All of us going hush, hush, hush!’

So why are we talking about nursery rhymes? You may well ask. While many of us are acquainted with the myth surrounding the origin of this rhyme, some of us have no clue about the rhyme’s origins.

The myths behind this rhyme

The myth being that this seemingly innocent poem stems from the dark ages of the plague in Great Britain. Every poem or literary work is prodded and probed for its possible origin and history.

It’s easy to understand why there is a doubt about this poem’s origin. Many say that since it was published for the first time in 1881 (in Kate Greenaway’s Mother Goose) it came from the Victorian Age. Others claim that it originated during the Great Plague (1665-1666) or the Black Death centuries earlier in 1347.

It was, and is, a nursery rhyme sung in the playground orally. Many believe that historians of that period had enough to write about without having to document normal children’s playtime songs too. This, they say, is why it wasn’t in print form earlier than 1881.

And like everything else in life, there are believers as well as non-believers of this myth. The believers do so because of urban legends and non-believers are mostly folklore scholars who find no concrete evidence.

‘Ring-a Ring-a’ is said to stand for the ring shaped rashes around the mouth that victims of the plague had. ‘Pocket full of posies’ quite literally meant the flowers carried around everywhere to ward off the smell; it also stood for superstitious beliefs that carrying posies kept the plague away. ‘Ashes! Ashes!’ well, meant the corpses being burnt to ashes, and their houses too to fight the plague. Alternately, ‘Atishoo!Atishoo’ meant the victims sneezing before the fall (death).

Lastly, ‘We all fall down’ means? They died.

During the Great Plague, about a third of the population of Britain was wiped out.

Refuters of this myth

– Several folklore scholars are stern non-believers of this myth.

– The symptoms of the bubonic plague do not match the ones described in the poem. People dying of the bubonic plague did not have rashes about their mouths or sneeze. Hence, does not point to the Great Plague.

– The noted folklorists of childhood Iona and Peter Opie have reported that the plague theory didn’t appear until the 1950s. If the theory were true then we would expect to see it in circulation much sooner than that.

– It’s funny how it hasn’t been documented consciously or unconsciously anywhere, even if it was but a child’s poem. Even after 1665 to 1790.

– The modern variants of the poem could have lead to a misinterpretation as the early rhythm doesn’t imply any such thing.

– 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.

Why the believers stick to the myth

– Variants of the poem have been found to exist, albeit not in print format, well before 1881. For example, William Wells Newell, a respected folklorist wrote that the poem was in use by children in Bedford, Massachusetts, circa 1790.

– Coughing, sneezing are symptoms of pneumonic plague. Therefore the origin of the poem could be from pneumonic plague instead of bubonic. Plague nevertheless.

– The lines match the symptoms way too much to not count.

It just comes down to this, really: if the myth isn’t true, no issues. What if it were to become a fact? Imagine singing the rhyme, innocent and happy, when in reality it speaks of one of the darkest times in the world…