Why does it look like otters are always having fun? I don't know why I looked up the origins of Ring Around the Rosie, but was quite surprised by the answer. Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, USA, October 2024
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“Ring Around the Rosie” is a folk song that first arose during the Great Plague. The song was written by James FitzGerald and was first published in Kate Greenaway’s original edition of Mother Goose in 1881.
The rhyme is about the bubonic plague and Black Death. The plague devastated England and most of Western Europe in places like Germany. Many of the lines in “Ring Around the Rosie” reference symptoms of the plague, such as sneezing, coughing, and the red circular rash or a rosy rash that was present in different forms of plague.
People thought that posies would remedy symptoms of the illness, hence their reference in the song. Additionally, the titular “rosie” refers to rashes that were symptomatic of the Black Death, while “a-tishoo” references the sneezing symptoms of the plague. Finally, everyone “falling down” at the end of the rhyme references death.
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