Ring a Ring o' Roses

American children playing the game, an illustration by Jessie Willcox Smith from The Little Mother Goose (1912)

Variations, corruptions, and vulgarized versions were noted to be in use long before the earliest printed publications. One such variation was dated to be in use in Connecticut in the 1840s.[7] A novel of 1855, The Old Homestead by Ann S. Stephens, records the variation

A ring – a ring of roses,
Laps full of posies;
Awake – awake!
Now come and make
A ring – a ring of roses.[8]

Kate Greenaway's illustration from Mother Goose or the Old Nursery Rhymes (1881)

Another early record of the rhyme was in Kate Greenaway's Mother Goose; or, the Old Nursery Rhymes (1881):

Ring-a-ring-a-roses,
A pocket full of posies;
Hush! hush! hush! hush!
We're all tumbled down.[9]

In his Games and Songs of American Children (1883), William Wells Newell reports several variants, one of which he provides with a melody and dates to New Bedford, Massachusetts around 1790:

Ring a ring a Rosie,
A bottle full of posie,
All the girls in our town
Ring for little Josie.[7]

Newell writes that "[a]t the end of the words the children suddenly stoop, and the last to get down undergoes some penalty, or has to take the place of the child in the centre, who represents the 'rosie' (rose-tree; French, rosier)."[7] A different penalty was recorded in an 1846 article from the Brooklyn Eagle describing the game named Ring o' Roses. A group of young children form a ring, from which a boy takes out a girl and kisses her.[10]

An 1883 collection of Shropshire folk-lore includes the following version:

A ring, a ring o' roses,
A pocket-full o' posies;
One for Jack and one for Jim and one for little Moses!
A-tisha! a-tisha! a-tisha![11]

On the last line "they stand and imitate sneezing".[11] In their Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes the Opies record similar variations over time.[12]

Children's Dances by Hans Thoma, 1872

A German rhyme first printed in 1796 closely resembles "Ring a ring o' roses" in its first stanza[13] and accompanies the same actions (with sitting rather than falling as the concluding action):[14]

Loosely translated this says: "Round about in rings / We children three/ Sit beneath an elderbush / And 'Shoo, shoo, shoo' go we!" The rhyme (as in the popular collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn) is well known in Germany and has many local variants.[15]

Another German version runs:

Ringel, Ringel, Rosen,
Schöne Aprikosen,
Veilchen blau, Vergissmeinnicht,
Alle Kinder setzen sich![16]

– in translation: "A ring, a ring o' roses,/ Lovely apricots,/ Violets blue, forget-me-nots,/ Sit down, children all!"

Swiss versions have the children dancing round a rosebush.[17] Other European singing games with a strong resemblance include "Roze, roze, meie" ("Rose, rose, May") from The Netherlands with a similar tune to "Ring a ring o' roses"[18] and "Gira, gira rosa" ("Circle, circle, rose"), recorded in Venice in 1874, in which girls danced around the girl in the middle who skipped and curtsied as demanded by the verses and at the end kissed the one she liked best, so choosing her for the middle.[19]

In 1898, A Dictionary of British Folklore contained the belief that an explanation of the game was of pagan origin, based on the Sheffield Glossary comparison of Jacob Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie. The theory states that it is in reference to Pagan myths and cited a passage which states, "Gifted children of fortune have the power to laugh roses, as Freyja wept gold." It claimed the first instance to be indicative of pagan beings of light. Another suggestion is more literal, that it was making a "ring" around the roses and bowing with the "all fall down" as a curtsy.[20] In 1892, the American writer, Eugene Field wrote a poem titled Teeny-Weeny that specifically referred to fay folk playing ring-a-rosie.[21]

According to Games and Songs of American Children, published in 1883, the "rosie" was a reference to the French word for rose tree and the children would dance and stoop to the person in the center.[7] Variations, especially more literal ones, were identified and noted with the literal falling down that would sever the connections to the game-rhyme. Again in 1898, sneezing was then noted to be indicative of many superstitious and supernatural beliefs across differing cultures.[20]

Since after the Second World War, the rhyme has often been associated with the Great Plague which happened in England in 1665, or with earlier outbreaks of the bubonic plague in England. Interpreters of the rhyme before World War II make no mention of this;[22] by 1951, however, it seems to have become well established as an explanation for the form of the rhyme that had become standard in the United Kingdom. Peter and Iona Opie, the leading authorities on nursery rhymes, remarked:

The invariable sneezing and falling down in modern English versions have given would-be origin finders the opportunity to say that the rhyme dates back to the Great Plague. A rosy rash, they allege, was a symptom of the plague, and posies of herbs were carried as protection and to ward off the smell of the disease. Sneezing or coughing was a final fatal symptom, and "all fall down" was exactly what happened.[23][24]

The line Ashes, Ashes in colonial versions of the rhyme is claimed to refer variously to cremation of the bodies, the burning of victims' houses, or blackening of their skin, and the theory has been adapted to be applied to other versions of the rhyme.[25]

In its various forms, the interpretation has entered into popular culture and has been used elsewhere to make oblique reference to the plague.[26] In 1949, a parodist composed a version alluding to radiation sickness:

Ring-a-ring-o'-geranium,
A pocket full of uranium,
Hiro, shima
All fall down![27]

In March 2020, during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, the traditional rhyme was jokingly proposed as the "ideal choice" of song to accompany hand-washing in order to ward off infection.[28]

Folklore scholars regard the Great Plague explanation of the rhyme as baseless for several reasons:

• The plague explanation did not appear until the mid-twentieth century.[19]
• The symptoms described do not fit especially well with the Great Plague.[24][29]
• The great variety of forms makes it unlikely that the modern form is the most ancient one, and the words on which the interpretation are based are not found in many of the earliest records of the rhyme (see above).[25][30]
• European and 19th-century versions of the rhyme suggest that this "fall" was not a literal falling down, but a curtsy or other form of bending movement that was common in other dramatic singing games.[31]

• Böhme, Franz Magnus (1897). Deutsches Kinderlied und Kinderspiel. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel. pp. 438–445.
• Delamar, Gloria T. (2001) [1987]. Mother Goose, From Nursery to Literature. Lincoln, Nebraska. pp. 38–39. ISBN 978-0595185771.
• Gomme, Alice Bertha (1898). The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Vol. 2. London: David Nutt. p. 108.
• Opie, Iona; Opie, Peter (1997) [1951]. The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press (Nabu Press). pp. 364–365. ISBN 978-0198600886.
• Opie, Iona; Opie, Peter (1985). The Singing Game. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 221–225, 227. ISBN 978-0198600886.
• Simpson, Jacqueline; Roud, Steve (2000). A Dictionary of English Folklore. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 296. ISBN 019210019X.