is it true?

Question

the nursery rhyme, a ring a ring of roses ,is about the bubonic plague.

Answer 1

And the correct answer is, "TRUE".

http://www.zelo.com/family/nursery/ringroses.asp

Answer 2

A common conjecture is that the rhyme is somehow connected to the Great Plague of London in 1665, or perhaps earlier outbreaks of bubonic plague in England. This story is entirely unsupported by textual sources, as there is no mention of the verses, nor written evidence of their existence, before 1881.

This idea, however, remains entrenched in the imagination of many. Detailed explanations have evolved to explain the different parts of the poem. For example, the first line evokes the round red rash that would break out on the skin of plague victims. The second line's "pocket full of posies" would have been a pocket in the garment of a victim filled with something fragrant, such as flowers that aimed to conceal the smell from the sores and the dying people. A second creative explanation for this line is that it referred to the purported belief that fresh-smelling flowers, nosegays, and pomanders would purify the air around them thus warding off disease. A third possibility includes the idea that "posies" are derived from an Old English word for pus, in which case the pocket would be referring to the swelling sore.

"Ashes, ashes" would refer to when people alive and dead were gathered up into piles and lit on fire in a belief that burning the diseased bodies would not allow the disease to spread. Several alternate endings to the song exist, one being: "atishoo, atishoo, we all fall down", intepreted as invoking the sneezing before "we all fall down", the eventual succumbing to death.

The first time the nursery rhyme was suggested to be plague related seems to be in 1961, James Leasor's book The Plague and the Fire. However, it is not clear whether Leasor concocted the plague interpretation on his own.

The rhyme was first published in Kate Greenaway's Mother Goose or The Old Nursery Rhymes (1881), centuries after the plague swept Europe; and there is no evidence of an earlier version. Further, many early versions of the rhyme omit the lines used to support these refereces to the plague. The plague connection is considered false by scholars of folklore.

Answer 3

Every child has happily joined hands with friends and recited the familiar nursery rhyme, "Ring around a rosie, a pocket full of posies. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down." Few people realize to what this seemingly happy little nursery rhyme actually refers.
This nursery rhyme began about 1347 and derives from the not-so-delightful Black Plague, which killed over twenty-five million people in the fourteenth century. The "ring around a rosie" refers to the round, red rash that is the first symptom of the disease. The practice of carrying flowers and placing them around the infected person for protection is described in the phrase, "a pocket full of posies." "Ashes" is a corruption or imitation of the sneezing sounds made by the infected person. Finally, "we all fall down" describes the many dead resulting from the disease.

Answer 4

No this all a myth as the nursery rhyme was invented long after bubonic plague was a problem

Answer 5

Yes, the ring of roses was something to do with people carrying them to offset the smell of the dead bodies, a lot of English nursery rhymes are based on horrible things , sweet little darlings

Answer 6

yes it is. almost every nursery rhyme is about people or events.The rings of roses are about the red painful blotches that appeared on the skin @ the time you first contracted it
I,ve got a friend who,s surname is Ringrose. i said to him that his name MUST be something to do with that time or the events of that time.
He told me that it was, his family were doctors in London @ the time of the great plague.
I live in Kent & down the road from me are 2 towns a few miles apart one called Blackheath & another called Gravesend.
Blackheath was called this due to the fact that it,s were all the victims of the plague were buried & Gravesend for obvious reasons is were their graves finish.
3 blind mice is about Mary Queen Of Scots. there are websites for this kind of stuff, just type in nursery rhymes & their history

Answer 7

When i was in primary school we were taught that it was, and if you say the rhyme through, it does make sense.For instance one of the symptoms of the plague was sneezing. Also having a pocket full of herbs was thought to keep the plague away, hence pocket full of posies. thats all i can remember, i was at school a very long time ago!

Answer 8

Yes it is. Ring around the rosie,refers to what the spots looked like that would come up on someone's body when they caught the plague.The pocket full of posies referred to flowers that people would carry around with them to hold under their noses.The stench of the dead bodies in the streets was reportedly unbelievable.Ashes to ashes,we all fall down ,has to do with dying from the plague.

Answer 9

Its suggested that it is, but no-one actually knows, as the person who wrote it is a bit dead these days.

"Ring a ring o' roses"
The first Line is suggestive of the ring of red rash marks that signified the onset of bubonic plague.

" a pocket full of posies"
Posies are a collection of fragrant flowers wrapped in a handkerchief and were carried in the belief they would ward off disease.

"atishoo atishoo"
the sound of coughing.

"We all fall down"
dead perhaps?

But hey, who knows the truth... Maybe they all sneezed at the smell of the flowers in their pocket, and fell down gasping for air.

Answer 10

"needy" suggests checking www.snopes.com yet he says it's true. Had he bothered to read the link, he would have seen that snopes research indicates it is false. Apparently the bubonic plague occured centuries before the poem was written.

Answer 11

ring a ring o roses
pocket ful of posies

these lines refer to the fact that people thought dieases were passed by bad smells, so they used flowers to sweeten the air they breathed in.


aitichoo aitichoo
we all fall down (dead)


refered to sneezing (i.e being ill) than falling down dead. The original version did finish with the word dead


yes its true!!!