Anonymous British

Ring a Ring O' Roses

Ring a Ring O' Roses, A pocketful of posies, Atishoo!  Atishoo! We all fall down! It is sometimes suggested that the rhyme relates to the Black Death - the bubonic plague that spread through Europe in the 1340s, or to the Great Plague of London, 1665/6. The plausible-sounding theory has it that the 'ring' is the ring of sores around the mouths of plague victims, who subsequently sneeze and fall down dead. However the victims of the bubonic plague suffered swellings (or bubos) in their groins or armpits and not mouth sores or sneezing. The earliest written reference seems to be in Kate Greenaways book "Mother Goose" of 1881 The picture is taken from that book. However there are other references to similar verses over the previous hundred years though they mostly talk of bowing down and springing up, which the plague victims certainly did not. JS