Don't Be a Myth Truster - RATR

It seems like most have heard about that great little song we used to play, "Ring Around the Rosie", it turns out the myth says that this cute little song is about the bubonic plague !

Ring Around the Rosie
Where did the children's rhyme Ring Around the Rosie come from? Does it have any meaning? Or is it just a nonsense rhyme?

Ring around the rosie

A pocket full of posiesAshes, ashes

We all fall down

The common folkloric explanation is that this is a rhyme about the bubonic plague. "Ring around the rosie" refers to buboes on the skin. "A pocket full of posies" refers to flowers kept in the pocket to ward off the disease. "Ashes, ashes" is a reference to death, as in "ashes to ashes, dust to dust." The common variant of the third line, "Atishoo, atishoo," is a reference to sneezing and sickness. Finally, falling down is a representation of death.

A neat tale. Unfortunately, there is no evidence to support it.

The earliest printed version of the rhyme is from 1881, some 225 years after the last great plague struck England, and some 550 years after the Black Death of the 14th century--the outbreak most commonly associated with the bubonic plague. For the folkloric explanation to be true, the rhyme would have to have remained underground for over two centuries, defying the efforts of numerous recorders of folklore, and then finally appear in the form of a children's nursery rhyme. Words and phrases can remain underground a long time, but not that long.

But the most convincing evidence against the plague explanation is that the earliest versions of the rhyme are different, and are less subject to the plague interpretation. The earliest recorded version of the rhyme appears in Kate Greenaway's Mother Goose from 1881:
Ring-a-ring o' roses,A pocket full of posies,Hush! hush! hush! hush!We're all tumbled down
This version appears not so much as a story about death and disease, but rather about falling asleep after a day of picking flowers.

The rhyme appears almost simultaneously in America, published in an American book of children's rhymes in 1883. In that book, Games and Songs of American Children, William Wells Newell claims, that the following version was common among the children of Massachusetts in 1790 (although he provides no evidence to support this earlier date):

Ring a ring a rosie,

A bottle full of posie,

All the girls in our town

Ring for little Josie

Newell also published a different version of the rhyme, one that explains the falling down line and he provides some commentary on how the children played the game and what the words mean:
Round the ring of roses,Pots full of posies,The one who stoops last Shall tell whom she loves best
Newell comments:
At the end of the words the children suddenly stoop, and the last to get down undergoes some penalty, or has to take the place of the child in the centre, who represents the rosie (rose-tree; French, rosier).

Many other early variants exist. Few, if any, can be interpreted to refer to the plague.
OK, so if it's not about the plague, what is it about? Well, most likely it is simply nonsense, like Hickory, Dickory, Dock or the cow jumping over the moon.

I owe a special debt of gratitude to Ian Munro, who has compiled most of this information in his own web site. That site contains a lot more information on the subject, including a more complete list of variants

Check this site out for a Myth that was Trusted turns out to be a Myth that is BUSTED!

http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/amroth/RATR/ring.html