Origins: Ring around the Rosy / Rosey

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: IanC
Date: 24 Jul 02 - 05:00 AM

I wonder how often people ask those who perform these things what they think the words mean. After all, it's the fact that people keep on doing certain things which is the reason that rhymes, songs etc. are traditional.

I played "ring a roses" (atishoo version) for years as a child, without any assumptions that it was anything other than a game with quite pretty words. Of course children are unlikely to know what they're doing. There's bound to be a meaning to these things that the fools who perform them can't possibly understand ...

By the way, we often seem to fall into simple dating traps like assuming prior printing to imply earlier versions of things. For folk activities, printing depends on collection. Something can go on for years and not be collected. It won't be printed. Doesn't mean that it's later than something that was printed centuries before. Concrete evidence can only ever give a latest date. It can't be used as evidence of an earliest date.

;-)
Ian

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Nerd
Date: 24 Jul 02 - 01:22 AM

I don't think it's incontrovertible at all that "a-tishoo a-tishoo we all fall down" refers to a plague or pestilence. We are dealing with a play-party song (or a children's dancing song for English folks) where "all falling down" is just part of the game. You might as well say "you put your right foot in, you take your right foot out, you put your right foot in and you shake it all about" must be a song about epilepsy!

That's why the plague interpretation is so funny. It takes things that have perfectly easy meanings in that context ("ring around the rosy" or "ring a ring a roses" being an actual ring of children dancing around an actual or imagined rosebush), and gives them new meanings to suit a farfetched interpretation. The line with a-tishoo in it is just as likely to be a nonsense syllable as a sneeze--and anyway, sneezing isn't a symptom of the Black Death! Meanwhile, the things you'd expect to see in a song describing the plague are absent--The actual prominent symptom was not a rash on the cheek, but giant festering boils or buboes under the armpits and elsewhere. Of course, it'd be tough to rhyme that...

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 23 Jul 02 - 10:16 PM

But do you know of a book or article with the "Ashes, Ashes"? That is what I would like to find.
As Masato said, "How and why was the plague theory born in spite of the non-existence of evidence?" In other words, "Who done it?" Since it is late 19th or early 20th century, the culprit(s) should be identifiable.

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 23 Jul 02 - 08:29 PM

Well Dicho's penultimate post by the time I posted. Slow down, Dicho *G*

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 23 Jul 02 - 08:26 PM

It seems to me incontrovertible that the last two lines in Dicho's last post, if not all four, refer to some plague or pestilence. My own theory is that they were spawned/accreted or whatever in some relatively recent period when for some reason such a plague was a topic of conversation.

Mudcatters will recall how the Ken Burns film revived interest in the American Civil War, and how Di Caprio et al reawakened interest in the Titanic. Is there any way of researching whether a film about the black death might have been showing in New England around 1790?

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 23 Jul 02 - 07:55 PM

Oh? Kate Greenway's Mother Goose (1881) said Hush! Hush! Hush! Hush! Has that one died out?
According to the linked websites, A-tischa could have come from Shropshire (1883). Also from England, Ashes! Ashes! - which is the one I would like to trace to its origin.

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Snuffy
Date: 23 Jul 02 - 07:14 PM

Dicho - that's the version that is common in Britain. It's the only one I've ever heard or seen.

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 23 Jul 02 - 03:35 PM

In loking for the origin of "Ashes," I found the rhyme in "Lavender's Blue, 1954, book of nursery rhymes, compiled by Kathleen Lyons and Harold Jones, Oxford Univ. but as:
Ring-a-ring o' roses,
A pocket full of posies,
A-tishoo, a-tishoo!
We all fall down.

No information yet on who started the plague interpretation.

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Jul 02 - 07:53 AM

See Nonsense Songs, Type A - Brags (i.e., lies), in the introduction to the the Scarce Songs 1 file at www.erols.com/olsonw, and click on 'Brags' in the table of contents to see several earlier songs of the same type.

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: masato sakurai
Date: 20 Jul 02 - 07:36 AM

Thanks, Nigel, I didn't notice that.

I was born about ten thousand years ago,
There ain't nothin' in this world that I don't know,
I saw Peter, Paul and Moses playin' ring around the roses
And I'll whip the guy that says it isn't so.
(John A. Lomax & Alan Lomax, Best Loved American Folk Songs, Grosset & Dunlop, 1947, p. 30, stanza 1)

It can't be "Peter, Paul and Mary", which doesn't rhyme, and I don't like to be whipped.

~Masato

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 20 Jul 02 - 06:23 AM

Sorry to disappoint everyone, but "ring around the roses" is much older than any of the sources currently being quoted.
I have incontravertable evidence of this, from a primary source.
A man, who was "Born ten thousand years ago" claims he "Saw Peter Paul & Moses playing Ring Around The Roses"

I trust that this helps the situation

Nigel

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Genie
Date: 20 Jul 02 - 05:06 AM

Very interesting thread, folks. Too sleepy to digest it now, but seems like there's a lot to mull over. I kind of like Mark C.'s hypothesis, but I'll have to check out all these links.

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Nerd
Date: 20 Jul 02 - 01:16 AM

Adam,

I agree with you and Masato, actually, that a very interesting question is "why would the plague theory develop without evidence." The answer, I think, has to do with how folklore has been defined and studied, and (in the end) involves your second point about origins and the folklorist.

"Folklore" (originally "folk-lore") was coined as a "good Saxon compound" to replace the term "Popular Antiquities." Antiquarians were interested in studying old stuff. Early theorists of folklore held that the truly important meanings were almost never known to the holder of the lore, but had to be ferreted out by the folklorist, because scraps of lore were really the detritus of Mythological or Historical materials that had been forgotten. Early folkorists thus had a vested interest in connecting any scrap of lore they collected to Mythology or history, the older the better. Of course, it's ironic that folklorists seeking origins essentially ended up constructing "creation myths" of their own!

This attitude has long been discarded by folklorists in academia, but there is still, I think, a fascination with old historical and mythological origins among laypeople who have read some of the classic conjectural works of folklore/myth scholarship, like Graves's The White Goddess and Frazier's The Golden Bough. It is a form of interpretation that has a sturdy tradition behind it, though it is mostly discarded by professionals today. I would guess you need look no further than the enthusiastic readers of books like those to find the source of the Plague interpretation.

As to why folklorists have largely given up studying origins as such, I think it's because the kind of work that developed out of origins-seeking, Historic-Geographic analysis, came to seem both fruitless and pretty boring. After a long, extremely laborious process, the folklorist would conclude "it appears my best guess is that the story of X originated in India in the 7th Century, though I may be wrong about this." To which most younger folklorists in the 1960s began to ask "so what?"

I agree that origins and conjecture can be interesting, but in the end if I'm going to believe any origin story, I need some evidence.

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From:
Date: 20 Jul 02 - 12:35 AM

Masato's got a good question. If we take the plague-origin-theory not as a historical proposition, but as folklore itself, then we can forget about whether it's accurate (a substantial wing of folklorists regard origins as never completely recoverable, therefore uninteresting. I never quite followed the "therefore" part). So the question becomes, "what's the attraction of believing this?" or "what function does it serve for those who tell it?" As a first guess, I'd venture that it's an antidote to the romantic view of children to imagine them cheerfully singing songs about something so horrible -- it reminds us that they have to cope with some pretty hhorrible stuff.

Best,

Adam

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 19 Jul 02 - 10:19 PM

A-tishoo is noted in 1883, according to Opie. Two years earlier, Greenway had published Hush! Hush! Hush! Her writings were very popular in both the British Isles and North America and Hush! would be expected there as well. When was Ashes! first noted? You suggest that it is the corruption of A-tishoo, which is possible, but this shift would have more likely taken place in England.
The interpretation of the rose tree and the circle of players as a rash seems a difficult jump; it could have been stated by a popular author or editor of a widely circulated paper or magazine. (Wasn't there a tendency for Late Victorian-Edwardian authors to make illogical jumps like that?). It seems to me that the shift to ashes! from hush or a-tishoo is more likely a "guided" one than one evolved by children.

My (unsupported) suggestion is that there is an author or editor in the woodpile, and we might be able to identify him. Children certainly(?) did not evolve the plague theory.

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: masato sakurai
Date: 19 Jul 02 - 09:57 PM

Still another:

(5) Urban Legends Reference Palges - Language (Ring Around the Rosie)

I myself like this kind of interpretation (that is, the plague theory), whether or not it is based on facts or evidence.

~Masato

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Allan Dennehy
Date: 19 Jul 02 - 09:46 PM

Ring around the rosies As the light declines I remember Dublin city In the rare old times.

The Dubliners used to sing this , if I remember right. Im guessing that this song comes from the last century. The modern equivelant of the Black Death in Ireland up to 1950 was TB, by the way.

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Jul 02 - 09:32 PM

Masato, facts and evidence are irrelevant to true believers, and true believers always have the most votes. They call those who hold to facts or evidence heretics.

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: masato sakurai
Date: 19 Jul 02 - 09:24 PM

Another link:

(4) The "Real" Meaning of "Ring Around the Rosie"

The story of "Ring around the Rosie" and the Plague seems to be fairly widespread and diehard. A good number of websites contend or imply that there was a relationship (e.g., Black Death). Jack Maguire, in his Hopscotch, Hangman, Hot Potato, and Ha, Ha, Ha: A Rulebook of Children's Games (Prentice Hall, 1990, p. 4), reiterates this origin theory (of course, without evidence):
One of the grimmest stories of the origin of a game now called Ring-Around-the-Rosy. The first line of this verse, originally "Ring-a-ring o' roses," refers to the circular body rash that was an early symptom of the Great Plague of London, 1665. The healthy attempted to thwart the disease by carrying herbs ("A pocket full of posies"). In the final stages of the disease, the victim would start sneezing violently ("A-tishoo! A-Tishoo!," later corrupted to "ashes! Ashes!"). Death followed quickly ("We all fall down").

It would be interesting to discuss it from another point of view: "Why and how was the plague theory born in spite of nonexistence of evidence?".

~Masato

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Jul 02 - 07:42 PM

Dicho, Samuel Pepys's entire collection of broadside ballads, those in the 5 bound volumes, and the loose scattered sheets, may be found indexed in the broadside ballad index at www.erols.com/olsonw. The ballads in Firth's 'An American Garland' are also indexed there, as are all but a few unreprinted and unindexed collections in BL.

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 19 Jul 02 - 05:35 PM

The plague of 1665, mentioned by Greg Stephens and others, reminded me that Samuel Pepys, who lived through this time, best known for his diaries, was a ballad collector. His collection of over 1800 was left to Magdalene College (See Firth, Introduction to "An American Garland").

The thorough explanation by Philip Hiscock should be saved because the topic will undoubtedly come up again. I can't bring up any old threads today, but titles suggest that the subject has come up several times before.
I am intrigued by a song title in the DT, "Ring-Around-The-Rosy Rag," and look forward to reading the lyrics when the DT-Forum is functioning again.

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: GUEST,Nerd
Date: 19 Jul 02 - 03:38 PM

The piece left out of the puzzle in the above posts is that the plague interpretation is itself not old. There is no old folk knowledge about a connection between the plague and this rhyme. The claim seems to have been made only in the mid twentieth century, if Philip Hiscock of memorial University Newfoundland is correct.

In the absence of any sort of old folk knowledge, we can reasonably ask what evidence the mid twentieth century originators of the plague idea had. First of all, the interpretation is based essentially on one variant instead of on the huge range of texts that exist. Second, it proposes meanings for some of the words (ashes referring to cremation, ring around the rosie referring to a rash on the cheek) which are clever but not compelling. Third, even if they were compelling, why a medieval plague and not a nineteenth century outbreak of some disease?

All this suggests to a folklorist (which I am) that the whole thing is a red herring. You have to assume that the one text being analyzed retained all the oldest features (for which there is no evidence), that this text contains cryptic refernces to disease (for which there is no evidence) and that this disease was a very old plague (for which there is no evidence). In the end, whether a folklorist believes a given interpretation or not is based on evidence, and there is just no evidence of any kind that this interpretation is correct, besides a clever correspondence between some meanings of some of the words and some of the features of some diseases.

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: An Pluiméir Ceolmhar
Date: 19 Jul 02 - 07:07 AM

The article by Philip Hiscock (see Masato's third blue clicky) seems to make it an open-and-shut case (groan).

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: GUEST,Bagpuss
Date: 19 Jul 02 - 07:06 AM

I wonder what happened in 1768 BC that was so significant to them that they started counting years. Maybe one of them had a premonition that there would be a catastrophic eruption in 123 years time, so they had better start counting so they would know when to expect it.

Bagpuss

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: greg stephens
Date: 19 Jul 02 - 07:02 AM

OK so the Atlanteans counted their years from 1768 BC

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: GUEST,Bagpuss
Date: 19 Jul 02 - 06:57 AM

LOL Greg.

However the Santorini eruption occurred in 1645BC.

Not just a saggy old cloth cat....

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: greg stephens
Date: 19 Jul 02 - 06:17 AM

Undoubtedly one of the few relics left to us of the songs of the Atlantean civilisation.The 1,2,3 bit is certainly the date of the final destruction of Atlantis, possibly by the explosion of the volcanic island Santorini. Some have said the reference is to 123BC as the date of the explosion, but this seems unlikely as in 123 BC they didnt know it was 123BC as BC had not been invented. The most we can say with any certainty is that the explosion happened 123 years after(or possibly before) something or other else. Anything more would be conjecture at this stage.

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: GUEST,Bagpuss
Date: 19 Jul 02 - 06:07 AM

When we were little, there was a second verse, sung while sitting on the floor after "all fall down":

Down at the bottom of the deep blue sea
Catching fishies for my tea
By a one, by a two by a three

At the count of three everyone stood up and lifted the smaller children playing into the air.

Is this just a local thing (NE England), or did others have this ending too? Anyone know where it comes from/what it means?

Bagpuss

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 19 Jul 02 - 04:05 AM

Here's another thought. I haven't read the Opie book (not everyone has access to a good library, Malcolm, nor time to visit one during operating hours!) It seems to me, though (please correct me if I'm wrong, as it's late and I'm sleepy) that the argument put forth above goes something like this:
(1) "Ring Around a Rosy" can be found in an early form, which does not include elements like ashes and falling down.
(2) Those elements (ashes, etc.) are the ones that suggest to some people a reference to plague (let's leave the precise century open for now)
(3)Therefore, "Ring Around a Rosy" has nothing to do with plague.

It seems to me, though, that this argument is flawed. Isn't it possible that there is another song/poem which did refer to the Great Plague (or another one), and which then later became conflated with "Ring Around a Rosy"? If this were the case, then there would be some validity to the position that the rhyme as it exists today does in fact refer to plague.

Does this makes any sense to the scholars? Or to anyone? Or should I just go back to the beach?

Aloha,
Mark

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: masato sakurai
Date: 19 Jul 02 - 03:48 AM

There have been some sites on this rhyme, in addition to the links above.

(1) "Ring around the Rosie" Mini-FAQ

(2) "Ring around the Rosie" Variations
This is a comprehensive duscussion.
(3) The AFU and Urban Legend Archive: Misc -- ring around the rosie
As urban legend.

~Masato

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 18 Jul 02 - 09:49 PM

Go for it. I'm for a beer and a spot of television, I think. Talk to you soon (Great Plague permitting).

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: greg stephens
Date: 18 Jul 02 - 09:41 PM

go to bed, your brain's addled, Malolm. I'm off to curl up and read some history books.

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 18 Jul 02 - 09:37 PM

Not unless Ewan was 150 years or so old by the time he died! %>)

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: greg stephens
Date: 18 Jul 02 - 09:28 PM

And I admit that my analogy was a little specious. Though rather neatly constructed, don't you think?

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 18 Jul 02 - 09:24 PM

And you were quite right to do that; I expressed myself poorly that time. It's Doc Martens though, not hob-nails...

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: greg stephens
Date: 18 Jul 02 - 09:16 PM

I take all your points Malcolm, and you're quite probably right. But you can't tar all your opponents with the Black Death brush...Great Plague is surely more commonly quoted. Anyway, I'm sorry to say I was just having a go at you for fun, because you don't half jump on people with your hob-nailed boots for sloppy arguments; and I noticed a little chink in your formidable armour!

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 18 Jul 02 - 09:09 PM

I'd certainly quarrel with Greg's argument (particularly the analogy!) though in essence it's a perfectly fair point, in answer to which I can only plead tiredness; I should have been more specific, and have paid for it now! Though a form of the rhyme is on record as having existed at the end of the 18th century, it appears at that time to have been a simple dancing game:

Ring a ring a rosie,
A bottle full of posie,
All the girls in our town,
Ring for little Josie

The Opies further comment

"The A-tishoo is notably absent here, as it is also in other versions [William Wells Newell, Games and Songs of American Children, 1883] gives, in which the players squat or stoop rather than fall down:

Round the ring of roses,
Pots full of posies,
The one who stoops last
Shall tell whom she loves best.

They go on to dismiss fairly comprehensively the "Black Death" myth, which appears to be a fanciful invention of the 20th century. I think I've quoted them on the subject here before, so there's no need to repeat it now. As I've said, the book is easily available. All of this doesn't prove, as Greg rightly points out, that sneezes and falling down did not occur in earlier versions; since, however, their first known appearance is of some 90 years after the first recorded forms of the rhyme, the balance of probability is that they are, as I said (though I should have suggested) later accretions. Whatever, there is no evidence of any kind that the rhyme is older than the 18th century, unless further material has been unearthed since the Opies wrote on the subject.

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: greg stephens
Date: 18 Jul 02 - 08:48 PM

GUEST your point is worth pursuing too, but the fact is that Malcolm is indeed discussing it here, you and I have just read his contribution.

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Jul 02 - 08:42 PM

Greg,

Your point is worth pursuing, and I've made a number of attempts to start threads discussing the issue.

All have been filled with crap, by people who prefer to 'hear/read' themselves (and their half-baked opinions) rather than doing a bit of basic research.

It's a complex question, certainly.

I would however imagine that the amount of nonsensical junk generated here is part of the reason that Malcolm prefers to discuss such question in more erudite company.

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: greg stephens
Date: 18 Jul 02 - 08:23 PM

I was a bit long-winded there.Put it more simply. Say I write out 3 verses of Dirty Old Town today, and Malcolm Douglas writes out the full four verse version tomorrow. According to his logic, his fourth verse would be a "later accretion". My position is that I would have forgotten the fourth verse.

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: greg stephens
Date: 18 Jul 02 - 08:12 PM

Malcolm, you come down hard on lack of rigour in others concerning dates or origins of songs.On this occasion it is time to jump on you: you refer to "later accretions", ie lines which occur in an 1881 version but not in one from 1790. You know as well as I do that the fact that those lines do not appear in one version printed in 1790 has no bearing whatsover on whether they existed pre- 1790 or not.You may be right in your guess that they are later accretions, or you may be wrong. The fact that they don't appear in that 1790 version has no evidential weight one way or the other.
Say, by all means "In my opinion they are later accretions and my reasons are thus and thus". But you can't just state it as a fact. In my opinion, the 1790 and 1881 versions are from separate strands in the development of this rhyme, not two points along the same strand.

thus".

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 18 Jul 02 - 07:48 PM

No; it isn't old enough for that. It's quite easy to consult the Opie's Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (available in all good libraries), and it's a constant puzzle to me why people rarely bother to do so, preferring instead to repeat long-discredited Old Wives' Tales. First printed in Britain in 1881, but apparantly known in Massachusetts around 1790; where it had none of the later accretions which people nowadays imagine to refer to the Black Death.

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 18 Jul 02 - 07:44 PM

British version A-tishoo! instead of Ashes! Suddenly it becomes obvious. It is a song about pollen allergy!

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 18 Jul 02 - 07:39 PM

Thanks, Guest, for the Mother Goose Society page.

A bit of a side issue: Most versions have the fall down or tumble down line. I quoted one from Louisiana, Lomax Coll., which has "squat." My wife, from Georgia, says it was always "squat" in her area. Is "squat" confined to the South or a part thereof, or is it more widespread?

Another thought. Has it ever been related to the burning of witches or heretics??

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: greg stephens
Date: 18 Jul 02 - 06:55 PM

Mudlark's point reinforces McGrath's wonderfully. It may not have been creepy in 1800, and we'll probably never know. But is most certainly creepy now.

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: Mudlark
Date: 18 Jul 02 - 06:34 PM

And isn't it a creepy thing to hear, sung in a certain kind of singsong way....

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: greg stephens
Date: 18 Jul 02 - 06:26 PM

I appreciate that the earliest recorded form of the rhyme doesnt have the "all fall down" stuff.But that does not have any particular value as evidence: it may iself have been a variant of an earlier form which did have "all fall down" or something similar.

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: greg stephens
Date: 18 Jul 02 - 06:17 PM

My dictionary gives 16th century as first appearance of the word "posy"....so the rhyme presumably dates from after that.(though an earlier form without the roses/posies rhyme could be predate it of course). It could easily have existed unrecorded from 1680-1880....much longer definitely seems unlikely to me. I665 wasn't the last plague either, just the last Big One.

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Jul 02 - 06:13 PM

See this page too

Subject: RE: Ring Around The Rosey's History??
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 18 Jul 02 - 06:13 PM

There've been other threads chasing this up - one of them ended up leaving me pretty confident that the Plague/Black Death idea is Victorian historical romanticism, but I couldn't find that one.

However by now, whatever the origins, it has fairly well taken on those connotations from its use in protests against mass murder weapons research and so forth. Maybe that's more important than the strict facts about the origins of the rhyme. Another aspect of the folk process. If we need it, we make it.