Origins: Ring around the Rosy / Rosey

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring around the Rosy / Rosey
From: GUEST,Nerd
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 05:44 PM

Reading through this old thread, I just noticed that Hester unintentionally misunderstood the Opies. She says there is no connection between the English "May Games" and "Ring Around the Rosie" (which may be true), and that the Opies are therefore perpetuating nonsense when they say there is a connection among Classical deities, roses, and this rhyme, because those don't appear in English "May Games." But the Opies specified "the Continental tradition of May games," which goes back much further than the English May Games Hester studies. Indeed, the Opies seem merely to have meant European May celebrations, which go back to Classical times and do have all the associations the Opies mention.

As to whether they were part of English May Games, Hester knows more than I. But these associations were certainly known in England prior to the "May Games" proper; Chaucer's Legend of Good Women features Classical deities in rose garlands (though daisies are more prominent in the poem) who visit the poet on May Day. They were also certainly known during the heyday of the "May Games"; Thomas Morton's famous May Revels in Quincy, Massachusetts in 1627 combined a maypole, dancing, and a song to classical deities. Morton himself attested that his maypole "was a Trophe erected at first in honor of Maja, the Lady of learning which they [the Puritans] despise...," while Bradford, his detractor, wrote that "Morton became lord of misrule [...] They allso set up a May-pole, drinking and dancing aboute it many days togeather, inviting the Indean women, for their consorts, dancing and frisking togither, (like so many fairies, or furies rather,) and worse practices. As if they had anew revived & celebrated the feasts of ye Roman Goddes Flora, or ye beasly practieses of ye madd Bacchinalians."

Bradford and Morton were both middle-class rural Englishmen, Morton from Devon and Bradford from Yorkshire. The fact that they were fully aware of May Day's connection with flowers, Classical deities, and even fairies, makes it very unlikely, in my mind, that English people at the time were generally unaware of these connections.

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring around the Rosy / Rosey
From: Monique
Date: 13 Oct 10 - 03:17 PM

Thanks!

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring around the Rosy / Rosey
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 13 Oct 10 - 01:26 PM

No mention (Welsh) in Iona and Peter Opie, The Singing Game, Oxford, 1985, nor in Gomme.

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring around the Rosy / Rosey
From: Monique
Date: 13 Oct 10 - 04:41 AM

Would anyone know if there's a Welsh version of this rhyme?

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring around the Rosy / Rosey
From: GUEST,latecomer
Date: 30 May 10 - 08:39 PM

This may be a bit irrelevant at this point, but I'm not sure how accurate verses that come after the well-known "Ring around the rosy" verse are. The one I know of goes:

Cows in the meadow
eating buttercups
ashes, ashes,
we all stand up.

Maybe kids wanted a reason to stand up after they fell down, and so made up a rhyme for themselves. What other "stand up" verses have you heard?

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring around the Rosy / Rosey
From: GUEST,Asterisk
Date: 20 Jan 10 - 10:47 PM

THANK YOU for your wonderful, scholarly, and humourous thread on this fascinating rhyme...
to which no one will ever 'truly' know the all of answers. I have read the entire thread and do so appreciate all of your comments.

My hypothesis is that 'Ring around the Rosie' was inspired by the Dance of Death, gleefully performed in most European cities during the 14th century plague years. Death had become the Great Leveller, refuting the Chain of Being theory (heirarchy status quo of the Dark Ages)... it was the beginning of European understandings about equality!

I believe that children copied the swirling circular dance depicted in many medieval murals because it gave meaning to that terrible fact that everyone was falling down dead. The 'sing song' tone of the rhyme is an almost universally understood to be making mockery... in this case of the old ideas about heirarchy. All fall down became a type of anthem in that this fate was assured no matter what status a person had during their lifetime.

In the Dance of Death (I performed as Death in an original Spanish resucitation in 1982, then we 'modernized' the play for Canadian audiences in 1985), Death calls everyone, from the Pope, down through the Emporer, King, Captain, Merchant, etc. through 32 characters who all have their excuses, but none can refuse!

Na nana na na....

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring around the Rosy / Rosey
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 30 Dec 09 - 04:36 AM

Further to my last post: Peter Opie went on to say that he didn't think children would ever have wanted to play games about dying of the plague — but they both looked a bit nonplussed, and simply replied "Good question", when I asked them: what, then, of the 'Going to the gas-chambers' game which they describe children in Auschwitz as having played, in their 'Children's Games in Street and Playground'. For some reason that I can't quite now recall I omitted this bit of our dialogue [which naturally I taped thruout with their permission] from the Folk Review feature as it eventually appeared (July 1974), so this is the first time I have published it. I still have the tape - somewhere...

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring around the Rosy / Rosey
From: DMcG
Date: 30 Dec 09 - 04:25 AM

Sorry, above post was from me. I'm a few crumbs short of a cookie, I fear.

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring around the Rosy / Rosey
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Dec 09 - 04:18 AM

Following from Q, the Opies suggest the link is even more recent that the First world War. "The legend linking the plague with the game-song ... has not been found in the work of any commentator before the Second World War ..."

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring around the Rosy / Rosey
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 29 Dec 09 - 06:12 AM

Peter Opie, whom, along with Iona, I interviewed for Folk Review in the 1970s, described the 'plague' interpretation to me as "one of those pieces of folklore about folklore".

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring around the Rosy / Rosey
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 28 Dec 09 - 12:42 PM

Crylo, correct.
The 'husha....' part is similar to that of a Greenaway Mother Goose version from England, c. 1881-
Hush! Hush! Hush! Hush!
We're all tumbled down.

To repeat from posts above, no reports of the rhyme before 1880, and the 'plague' idea is a fanciful interpretation from about the time of the First World War.
See Iona and Peter Opie, 1985, "The Singing Game," Oxford University Press.

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring around the Rosy / Rosey
From: GUEST,-Crylo-
Date: 27 Dec 09 - 11:02 PM

My understanding of the rhyme here in Canada goes "Ring around the rosey a pocket full of posies, husha husha we all fall down.

It seems depending on location we hear the rhyme with different lyrics.

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring around the Rosy / Rosey
From: Jack Campin
Date: 05 Dec 09 - 08:45 PM

There isn't an "original" form of the rhyme - there are wide variations in the earliest ones we know. Read the whole of this thread.

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring around the Rosy / Rosey
From: GUEST,Mira Butterfly
Date: 05 Dec 09 - 08:31 PM

I would like to know the original verse, whether it be referring to the plague or not. All three verses; or so I am told.

Can anyone possibly help me with that?

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring around the Rosy / Rosey
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 08:30 PM

This has been gone over several times in the posts above; nothing found before the 19th c. of this English game.

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring around the Rosy / Rosey
From: GUEST,Stephen Tierney UK
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 07:37 PM

Ring a Ring a Roses is English in origin and has been modified like chinese whispers around the worlds and appears in many different forms.

It's important to remember that in Victorian England and back to medieval times death and high mortality was a fact of life for children and so many phrases, poems and tales would have had an unsavoury origin. The rhyme would have travelled to the USA with early settlers and evolved.

Many English phrases have unpleasant origins. 'No room to swing a cat'(of 9 tails), 'one for the road'(to Tyburn),'sweet fanny adams' are good examples. Many English rhymes also have less savoury origins too.

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring around the Rosy / Rosey
From: GUEST,joeeeyyy
Date: 19 Jan 09 - 08:19 PM

its about the plauge

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring around the Rosy / Rosey
From: Azizi
Date: 06 Jul 08 - 11:40 AM

Clarification: By "Southern American" I meant Southern USA.

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring around the Rosy / Rosey
From: Azizi
Date: 06 Jul 08 - 11:34 AM

The first rhyme that I think has some similarities with "Green Sally Up" {what I call version #1, The Sounds of South" CD version} is the rhyme that Dicho posted on this thread in 2002

Ring around a rosey, pocket full o' posies,
Light bread, Sweet bread, Squat!
Guess who she told me, tralalalala,
Mister Red was her lover, tralalalala,
If you love him, hug him!
If you hate him, stomp!

-snip-

Source: Lomax and Lomax, 1939 Southern States Collecting Trip, from Wiergate, Texas: (Sec. 13, Merryville, LA and vicinity)

-snip-

I call this version "Louisiana Ring Around The Rosie" because Lomax and Lomax collected it from Louisiana {LA].

The last two lines of that rhyme remind me of the lines "If you hate it fold your arms/ If you love it clap your hands" in version #1 of "Green Sally Up" as given above. Also, version #1 of "Green Sally Up" and that Louisiana version of "Ring Around The Rosie" both include the word "squat".

Actually, as Q has shared with us in this thread, a number of Southern American versions of "Ring Around The Rosie" include the word "squat".

Here are reposts of two of these examples from Q's post above:

Ring around the rosie,
Squat among the posies,
Ring around the roses,
Pockets full of posies,
One, two, three- *squat!
-snip-

Should this be called "Ring Around The Rosie, Squat} to distinquish it from other Ring Around The Rosie" examples?

A Ring, A Ring, A Raney
A ring, a ring, a raney
Buttermilk and tansy,
Flower here and flower there,
And all- squat!

-snip-

I call this version "A Ring, A Ring, A Raney". I know that ring means circle, but what does "raney" mean?

Both of these examples are from the same source: W. W. Newell, Games and Songs of American Children, 1883, (1903), Dover reprint.

If the African American game song "Green Sally Up" originally had as it's source the British game song "Ring Around The Rosie" ,then it eventually became an entirely different song-as seen by the "Step It Down" version. Of course, any "early" connection between these two game songs is speculation on my part. But I believe that it's worth a thought or two.

My thanks to Dicho, Malcolm Douglas, and Q for jump starting my thoughts about a possible connections between "Green Sally Up" and "Ring Around The Rosie". I'm interested in any comments that folks here might have about these speculations.

Btw, this page of my website devoted to "Green Sally Up" contains most of these comments and more, including my thanks and a hyperlink to this thread:

http://cocojams.com/green_sally_up__song.htm

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring around the Rosy / Rosey
From: Azizi
Date: 06 Jul 08 - 10:56 AM

I happened upon this thread last night. After reading some of the old American variants of "Ring Around The Rosie", I got to thinking about the possible connection between these rhymes and the version of "Green Sally Up" that is found on Disc 4 of Alan Lomax's Sounds of the South, A Musical Journey from the Georgia Sea Isles to the Mississippi Delta {Atlantic 787496-2; 1993}.

There's another version of "Green Sally Up" that is included in the book but not the record of African American Georgia Sea Isles children's game songs, Step It Down by Bessie Jones and Bess Lomax Hawes. The "Step It Down" version of "Green Sally Up" is composed by combining floating lines and verses from "Miss Mary Mack", "I Love Coffee, I Love Tea" and other African American children's rhymes. As such, besides their first lines, the "Step It Down" version has very little in common with the "Sounds Of The South" version of "Green Sally Up". For that reason I think that the "Sounds Of The South" version of "Green Sally Up" is older than the "Step It Down" version.

Here are the two versions of these rhymes that I've mentioned:

Version #1- [from "Sounds Of The South" CD]
Green Sally up. Green Sally down.
last one squat got to tear the ground.

Ole {Oh?} Miss Lucy dead and gone.
Left me here to weep and moan.
If you hate it fold your arms.
If you love it clap your hands.

-snip-

Version #2- [from "Step It Down"]
Green Sally up, Green Sally down
Green Sally bake her possum brown.

Asked my mama for fifteen cents
to see the elephant jump the fence.
He jumped so high, he touched the sky
He never got back till the fourth of July.

You see that house upon that hill,
That's where me and my baby live.

Oh the rabbit in the hash come a-stepping in the dash,
With his long-tailed coat and his beaver on.

**

Btw, the song "Flowers" by the pop singer Moby uses the repeated clip of the Sounds of The South recording of "Green Sally Up". Could it be that Moby named his song "Flowers" because he thinks there's a connection between "Green Sally Up" and "Ring Around The Rosie" [particularly those versions of that game song found in Newell's book and posted in Q's 30 Oct 04 - 11:21 PM comment on this thread]?

Maybe...

**

I'll share some additional thoughts about the possible connections between some "Ring Around The Rosie" rhymes and the "Sounds of South" version of "Green Sally Up" in my next post to this thread.

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Azizi
Date: 15 Jul 06 - 10:27 PM

If by 'managing' you mean greeting guests, then that buck stops with all of us.

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: BuckMulligan
Date: 15 Jul 06 - 10:14 PM

How nice to have you managing all this for us, Azizi.

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Azizi
Date: 15 Jul 06 - 02:00 PM

Let me take this opportunity to say "Welcome" to all new guests who came here to find out more about Ring Around The Rosey and other subjects.

I hope that you will consider joining our online community. Joining Mudcat is free and easy-Just click the word Membership at on the right hand top of any page.

One of the benefits to membership is the ability to send private messages [pms] to other members.

Best wishes,

Azizi

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: BuckMulligan
Date: 15 Jul 06 - 01:52 PM

Perhaps, but also unattested.

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 15 Jul 06 - 12:52 PM

Ho hum. The rhyme itself appeared in the 19th c.

The ring was pubic hair around the 'rosy'. The last two lines are meant to evoke phallic images.

(Now isn't that a better explanation?

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: BuckMulligan
Date: 15 Jul 06 - 12:33 PM

danensis, while there may be links between some "nursery rhymes" and events in history, that's insufficient evidence for linking a particular rhyme to a particular event. Linguists, etymologists, and folklorists generally refuse to accept the link between "plague" or "Black Death" or any other particular event, eipdemiological or otherwise, and the "rind around the rosy" rhyme. It is a "folk etymology" unattested by hard evidence. You can still believe in it if you like, of course, but you're engagin in an act of faith, not science.

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: DMcG
Date: 15 Jul 06 - 12:14 PM

"threads", not "threats". Freudian slip there, I think.

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: DMcG
Date: 15 Jul 06 - 12:13 PM

Ok, I'm finally convinced. There ARE good reasons for closing threats apart from abuse, etc.

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: danensis
Date: 15 Jul 06 - 11:25 AM

My apologies, I didn't realise that the Black Death was the septicemic form of the infection casued by Yersinia pestis.

Many nursery rhymes were based on topical events of the time - Little Jack Horner, Goergie Porgie, HUmpty Dumpty, and I see no reason why "Ring a Ring a Roses" should be any different.

John

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: GUEST,Nerd
Date: 15 Jul 06 - 09:21 AM

Not so, Danesis. The incidents generally known as "The Black Death" and "The Great Plague" were both flea-borne. They were, most likely, the same disease: Bubonic Plague. You can also catch the infection by coughed saliva and blood droplets of victims, however (pneumonic plague).

It is bacterial, not viral.

There are a few scientists who question that the Black Death was bubonic plague, but I don't know their research well. Do you have any further knowledge on this?

BTW, interesting as your post is, it is, as we have been saying, irrelevant to "Ring around the Rosie." Just sayin'.

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: danensis
Date: 15 Jul 06 - 05:18 AM

I find it interesting the way The Black Death (an airborne infectious disease) and the Great Plague (a flea borne viral infection) have become conflated in this thread.

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: GUEST,Joan
Date: 15 Jul 06 - 12:20 AM

I'm new to this forum and hope it's OK to jump in. Actually, I found this thread because I was looking for an interpretation of Arlo Guthrie's "Ring-Around-A-Rosy Rag," so my Google search brought up Russ' post, where he offers to explain the origins of Guthrie's lyrics to anyone who's interested. Well, I'm interested!

I would have written to Russ privately, since Guthrie's song is not the topic of this thread, but I couldn't figure out how to do that, so I'm posting away. I suspect that Guthrie's song is a drug song, what with references to going to the park and getting busted, Officer Joe Strange and blowing your mind, but what the heck is the "Ring-Around-A-Rosy Rag"? Help? Lyrics here: http://www.arlo.net/

And, to go back on-topic, the Urban Legend site Snopes.com has a page about the nursery rhyme, "Ring Around the Rosie." They reject the "black plague" interpretation:
http://www.snopes.com/language/literary/rosie.htm


-- Joan

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Brían
Date: 23 Apr 05 - 07:53 PM

The Great Dying: The 1918 Influenza Epidemic will give a more accurate picture of this diease. My father-in-law had some memories. I have seen a letter written by someone who was warned by a fortune teller that she would die if she did not leave town (no surprise there). She did. I have read an account of a four-year-old singing THE WEXFORD GIRL complete knocking down with a stick and dragging around by the hair and announcing, "That's the best I ever sung it." A child's ability to comprehend all sorts of painful topics is totally underestimated.

Brían

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: GUEST,Turk
Date: 23 Apr 05 - 04:54 PM

Has anyone here ever heard of the 1918 Influenza Outbreak? An epidemic that lasted two full years, went around the world and killed between 20-40 million people.
The worst pandemic in known history.
The first markings of this "plague" came around the cheeks. Red and black, the ring of roses. The last symptoms were vile, horrible sneezes that threw blood and puss out of the lungs, quickly culminating in a wheezing death. Other rhymes were also invented about this pandemic, so maybe, was "Ring around the roses."

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: masato sakurai
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 07:37 PM

This must be Q's version. Don't sing it in Georgia.

X:1
T:Civil War Ring a Ring a Roses
M:C
L:1/8
S:Q the Mudcatter
K:Bb
d3/2 c/ B c (dF F) F | G3/2 A/ B c B2 B B|
w:Ring a ring a ros - es A pock-et full of pos-ies A-
(D3/2E/) F F (G F) G B|(c3/2B/) (cd) c4|
w:ti - shoo a-ti - shoo We'll all_ fall_ down.

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Lighter
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 06:24 PM

Q, that's sick! Kids wouldn't sing about that.

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 03:51 PM

All wrong!
On Sherman's March to the Sea, Union troops drew a ring around Atlanta and burned much of the city. 'Pockets full of posies' referred to the looting. Thus 'Rosie' is the burning city, and the troops were the 'ring.'
"Atlanta's Ashes" were the result (Apologies to Frank McCourt).

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: GUEST,Gordo
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 03:25 PM

To: Christina, Jan 30.
It is nice, warm, and fuzzy to think that this was not a children's song. Politically correct in every way! BUT, a hundred or more years ago, death was more real to every living person, young or old. There were no antibiotics, hospitals were a mess and usually only a place to go to die. Most children did not live to the age of majority. Also, Do you remember the line from the child's prayer,Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep, - "IF I SHOULD DIE BEFORE I WAKE"? This line has been changed recently.

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: GUEST,Gordo
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 12:13 PM

I believe the children's version dates to medieval times. The origin will never be traced accurately, bucause it was passed down in oral tradition. You can still see some of this in jump rope songs and military cadence chants. The verses will change to fit the times. It is easy to see the corelation between the words of Ring Around The Rosey and symptoms of the plague, and some of the previous variations of the words achoo, ashes, arses are one way a true folk song evolves - when words become garbled or misunderstood, new words are substituted. You will never find a direct tie to this rhyme. It is not like LIZZIE BORDEN TOOK AN AXE.

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 31 Jan 05 - 08:48 PM

?

Rosie

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 31 Jan 05 - 08:46 PM

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 31 Jan 05 - 08:34 PM

This thread will outlive us all...

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Nerd
Date: 31 Jan 05 - 08:16 PM

Yes, that was the subtext of my post, Malcolm :-)

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: masato sakurai
Date: 31 Jan 05 - 08:15 PM

With the "Black Death" myth often cropping up, this thread seems never ending.

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Lighter
Date: 31 Jan 05 - 08:12 PM

Malcolm, if you'd been educated over here, you'd know exactly why this happens.

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 31 Jan 05 - 07:59 PM

It's a pity the kick can't be administered to the idiots who repeatedly post the same old, discredited myth to this over-long and played-out discussion without bothering to read any of it first. What do they think they are achieving, beyond wasting everybody's time?

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Lighter
Date: 31 Jan 05 - 07:51 PM

Nerd, if the kick had been administered during the actual wedding (say, to the bride holding the bouquet or "poseys") our analyses would jibe nicely.

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Nerd
Date: 31 Jan 05 - 01:49 PM

Actually, it's about that favorite schoolyard pastime, the kick up the arse!

The "Rosey" is not a facial cheek but the cheek of someone's arse. The "ring" is the mark made by the hobnail boot of a person administering a swift kick. The Pocket full of posies is the back pocket of the victim's trousers, at which the kick was traditionally aimed, and the rest of the rhyme is:

"arses, arses, we all fall down!"

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: GUEST,Christina
Date: 30 Jan 05 - 03:08 PM

ummm..... I heard It was about Black Death, but why would they have children singing a song about such a horrible thing? I think Lighter is right about it being a song about a wedding. : )

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: GUEST,Lighter at work
Date: 26 Jan 05 - 10:21 AM

Q, I feel GOOOD! SO GOOOOOOD! We're all dancing around the office right now!