Photo Credit: Nursery Rhymes

Ring a Ring o’ roses,
A pocket full of posies,
A-tishoo! A-tishoo!
We all fall down.

Ring a Ring o’ roses, a child’s rhyming game, has entertained children for many years. I grew up knowing it as “ring-around-a-rosy” and often left my friends and I in a dizzy fit of laughter. However, the origins of this song and dance routine occurred during a dark time in history. From 1665-1666, the Great Plague of London decimated England. Within London, around 70,000 died, a large percentage of the city’s total population of 460,000. The rhyming game reportedly found it’s origins during that event.

Children playing “ring-around-a-rosy” in Chicago, Illinois. Photo Credit: Library of Congress

The rhyme follows the effects of the plague in the following ways:

• Ring a Ring o’ roses – An early symptom of the plague was a red, circular rash.
• A pocket full of posies – One superstition was that posies would help protect against the disease, so they would carry the herb with them. It was also used as a fragrance against the disease’s smell.
• A-tishoo! A-tishoo! – Sneezing or coughing was one of the last symptoms before death. In later rhyme versions, Ashes! Ashes!, replaces this sentence. The bodies of plague victims were usually cremated, so this later adaption still works within the original idea.
• We all fall down – This last line states the final result of the plague – death.

Children playing “ring-around-a-rosy” at a Kentucky school in August 1914. Photo Credit: Lewis Wickes Hines/Library of Congress

Panati, Charles. Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things. New York: Harper & Row, 1987, 196.
The Great Plague