Anyone who read the threads know that the black death got attached to the nursery rhyme sometime after 1900, probably after 1930. People still insist on taking the word of unsubstantiated websites.

Guest Help, here we go. "Ill take the high road," is from the medieval song "Banks of Loch Lomond," which means that the ill are taking the high road to Heaven. Tosspots take the "low road" because they are on the low road to Hell. The "Banks of Loch Lomond" is an ancient Scottish appelation for Purgatory. Centuries later, some semi-literate Scot tried to make a song of parting out of it, but he was too drunk at the time to make sense and only succeeded in obscuring the Biblical warnings implicit in the original words, now partly lost.