3/19/2023 0 Comments Dancing in the dark lyricsMeanwhile, there’s no evidence the rhyme existed in English until the late 19th Century. The Opies give versions from Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, among other places. For example, this rhyme and dance are internationally distributed, and records turn up on the European continent before they do in England. But there are other reasons, too, not to believe the plague story. Plague theorists say it’s still possible that the plague was the original meaning, and that children pressed the rhyme into service for their games and dances. The above observations show that “Ring Around the Rosie” is a “singing-game” or a “play-party song,” both of which are names for children’s dance songs. In many versions, then, the roses and posies signify what flowers often signify in traditional European culture: not suffering and death, but joy and love.Ĭhildren playing “Ring Around the Rosie” in Chicago, Illinois, April, 1941. Newell explicitly states that the game was played like this in America in the 1880s, and European analogs from the same time and later are similar. In some versions, this child then takes up a place in the middle of the ring, representing the “rosie” or rose bush. The last to do so (or the one that jumps the gun) has to pay a penalty, which is sometimes to profess love for (or hug or kiss) another child. None of these versions fits the plague interpretation very well, but they do reveal other functions and meanings: the rhyme is often used as a playful courtship game in which children dance in a ring, then suddenly stoop, squat, curtsey (“curchey”), or in some cases fall to the ground. Red was her lover, tralalalala If you love him, hug him! If you hate him, stomp! The words were as follows: Ring around a Rosey Pocketful o’ posies Light bread, sweet bread, squat! Guess who she told me, tralalalala Mr. On May 16, 1939, in Wiergate, Texas, John and Ruby Lomax collected an interesting version for the Library of Congress, from a group of African American schoolgirls. William Wells Newell, writing in 1883, gave several versions, including: Round the ring of roses Pots full of posies The one who stoops last Shall tell whom she loves bestĪnd Ring around the rosie Bottle full of posy All the girls in our town Ring for little Josie However, many versions do not make them portable but install them in in pots or bottles, which doesn’t fit well with the plague interpretation. “Posies,” or bouquets of flowers, are almost universal in the song. Moreover, in many versions, everyone gets up again once they have fallen down, which hardly makes sense if falling down represents death. For example, Iona and Peter Opie give an 1883 version (in which “curchey” is dialect for “curtsey”): A ring, a ring o’roses A pocket full of posies One for Jack and one for Jim and one for little Moses A curchey in and a curchey out And a curchey all together Many versions have no words that sound like sneezes, and many versions don’t mention falling down. This allows us to ask whether the specific images associated with the plague occur in all or even most versions. First, like most folklore items, this rhyme exists in many versions and variants. This interpretation emerged in the mid-twentieth century, and has become widespread, but it has never been accepted by folklorists, for several reasons. The fatalism of the rhyme is brutal: the roses are a euphemism for deadly rashes, the posies a supposed preventative measure the a-tishoos pertain to sneezing symptoms, and the implication of everyone falling down is, well, death. Ring-a-Ring-a-Roses is all about the Great Plague the apparent whimsy being a foil for one of London’s most atavistic dreads (thanks to the Black Death). I’ll discuss one of the rhymes in particular, because it tells us interesting things about folklore and our ideas about folklore: “Ring Around the Rosie,” or “Ring-a-Ring-a-Roses,” as it’s sometimes known.įitzGerald’s text goes like this: Ring-a-ring-a-roses,įitzGerald states emphatically that this rhyme arose from the Great Plague, an outbreak of bubonic and pneumonic plague that affected London in the year 1665: Or do they? Looking closely at these rhymes, and at scholarship surrounding them, suggests other interpretations. Her illustration was published in 1881 and is therefore in the public domain.Ī recent blog post at Londonist describes “Five London Nursery Rhymes Depicting Death and Ruin.” The rhymes in question have diverse origins and histories, but what seems incontrovertible from James FitzGerald’s work is that they describe dark and portentous matters from English history. Kate Greenaway’s Mother Goose or the Old Nursery Rhymes (1881) was the first publication of “Ring Around the Rosie” in English.
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