Ring a Ring o' Roses


"Ring a Ring o' Roses" or "Ring a Ring o' Rosie" is an English nursery rhyme or folksong and playground singing game. It first appeared in print in 1881, but it is reported that a version was already being sung to the current tune in the 1790s and similar rhymes are known from across Europe. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 7925.

Lyrics

It is unknown what the earliest version of the rhyme was or when it began. Many incarnations of the game have a group of children form a ring, dance in a circle around a person, and stoop or curtsy with the final line. The slowest child to do so is faced with a penalty or becomes the "rosie" and takes their place in the center of the ring.
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.
Common British versions include:

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

Common American versions include:

Ring-a-round the rosie,
A pocket full of posies,
Ashes! Ashes!
We all fall down.

.
Common Indian versions include:

Ringa ringa roses,
Pocket full of posies
Husha busha!
We all fall down!

Common Maori versions include:

Ring-a-round the roses,
A pocket full of posies,
Kohuru! Kohuru!
We all fall down.

The last two lines are sometimes varied to:

Hush! Hush! Hush! Hush!
We've all tumbled down.

Early attestation

A reference to a young children's game named Ring o' Roses occurs in an 1846 article from the Brooklyn Eagle. A group of young children form a ring, from which a boy takes out a girl and kisses her.
An early version of the rhyme occurs in a novel of 1855, The Old Homestead by Ann S. Stephens:

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

The novel goes on to describe a nineteenth-century Fourth of July celebration by children housed in a hospital in Roosevelt Island, New York : "Then the little girls began to seek their own amusements. They played 'hide and seek', 'ring, ring a rosy', and a thousand wild and pretty games".
Another early printing of the rhyme was in Kate Greenaway's 1881 edition of Mother Goose; or, the Old Nursery Rhymes:

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

In 1882, Godey's Lady's Book has the following version:

Ring around a rosy
Pocket full of posies.
One, two, three—squat!

Before the last line, the children stop suddenly, then exclaim it together, "suiting the action to
the word with unfailing hilarity and complete satisfaction".
In his Games and Songs of American Children, 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.

Newell writes that "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'."
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!

On the last line "they stand and imitate sneezing".
A manuscript of rhymes collected in Lancashire at the same period gives three closely related versions, with the now familiar sneezing, for instance:

A ring, a ring o' roses,
A pocket full o' posies –
Atishoo atishoo we all fall down.

In 1892, folklorist Alice Gomme could give twelve versions.

Other languages

A German rhyme first printed in 1796 closely resembles "Ring a ring o'roses" in its first stanza and accompanies the same actions :

Ringel ringel reihen,
Wir sind der Kinder dreien,
sitzen unter'm Hollerbusch
Und machen alle Husch husch husch!

Loosely translated this says "Round about in rings / We three children / Sit beneath a elderbush / And we all go 'Hush, hush, hush'!" The rhyme is well known in Germany with the first line "Ringel, Ringel, Reihe" ; it has many local variants, often with "Husch, husch, husch" in the fourth line, comparable to the "Hush! hush! hush! hush!" of the first printed English version. This popular variant is notable:

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

The translation is "A ring, a ring of roses. Beautiful apricots. Blue violets, forget-me-nots. All children sit down."
Swiss versions have the children dancing round a rosebush. Other European singing games with a strong resemblance include "Roze, roze, meie" from The Netherlands with a similar tune to "Ring a ring o' roses" and "Gira, gira rosa", 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.
In Serbo-Croatian, there is a similar rhyme called "Ringe Ringe Raja":

Ringe-ringe-raja,
Doš'o čika Paja,
Pa pojeo jaja.
Jedno jaje muć,
A mi, djeco, čuč!

A rough translation is "Ringe Ringe Raya , uncle Ducky has come, and he ate all the eggs, one egg crashed, and we children squat!" On the last word, the children singing the rhyme jump or squat.
In Slovene, there is a similar rhyme called "Ringa, ringa raja":

Ringa, ringa raja,
muca pa nagaja,
kuža pa priteče,
pa vse na tla pomeče.

A rough translation is "Ringa, ringa raja , the cat is being naughty, the dog comes running around, and throws everyone on the ground."
In Slovak, there is a similar rhyme called "Kolo, kolo mlynské":

Kolo, kolo mlynské
za štyri rýnske,
kolo sa nám polámalo
a do vody popadalo,
urobilo bác!

A rough translation is "Wheel, wheel of a mill costing four rhenish guilders, the wheel broke, and fell into water, with a thud!"
In Italian the rhyme has two different versions. The shorter goes this way:

Giro Girotondo,
casca il mondo,
casca la Terra,
tutti giù per terra!

Which roughly translates this way: " turn, turn around, the world falls down, Earth falls down, we all fall down !". It is to be noticed that in Italian the word terra means both Earth and ground. There is a slightly longer version that reads:

Giro Girotondo,
quant'è bello il mondo
il mondo dei bambini,
con tanti fiorellini.
Centocinquanta, la gallina canta,
canta sola sola, non vuole andare a scuola,
la gallina bianca e nera, ti dà la buonasera
ti dà la buonanotte, il lupo è dietro la porta,
la porta casca giù, il lupo non c'è più
A terra tutti giù!

The translation is: " turn, turn around, how beautiful is the world, the world of the children, with many little flowers. One hundred fifty, the chicken sings, she sings all alone she doesn't want to go to the school, the chicken is white and black, she says good evening, she says good night, the wolf hides behind the door, the door falls down, the wolf disappears and we all fall down!"
While singing the longer version, children often form two circles one inside the other, which turn in opposite directions; when the verse changes, the direction of the circle changes too, and if someone goes wrong he or she is sent off.

Meaning

The origins and meanings of the game have long been unknown and subject to speculation. Folklore scholars, however, regard the Great Plague explanation that has been the most common since the mid-20th century as baseless.

Theories from the late 19th century

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. In 1892, the American writer, Eugene Field wrote a poem titled Teeny-Weeny that specifically referred to fey folk playing ring-a-rosie.
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. 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.

The Great Plague explanation of the mid-20th century

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 Black Death in England. Interpreters of the rhyme before World War II make no mention of this; 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 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.
In its various forms, the interpretation has entered into popular culture and has been used elsewhere to make oblique reference to the plague. In 1949, a parodist composed a version alluding to radiation sickness:
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.

Counterarguments

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