i just found out what ring around the rosie was all about!!
-GUEST 16 Oct 08

I absolutely don't want a discussion about the meaning of the game song "Ring Around The Rosie" to be mixed into this discussion about the meaning of the words to "Iko Iko".

That said, Guest 16 Oct 08, I hope you read this Mudcat thread before you tell your child that made up story about the meaning of that children's game that keeps on being discounted but people still keep passing it on as the truth and nothing but the truth.

Pay heed to these words from yesteryear {or thereabouts}:   

Subject: RE: Origins: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: BuckMulligan - PM
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 [sic] 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.