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A post for Jenn...
Jul. 11th, 2005 10:33 pm
Gotta love that nursery rhyme.
Unfortunately, somebody afterwards pulled out the story about "Ring around the Rosie" being about the Plague.
And again, I say, that's just an urban legend. I haven't done any firsthand research, and I don't intend to, because every last reference I've seen has scads of information of it's own, starting with the "nope, didn't see it written until centuries after the plague was gone" bit, through the "well, the older versions are very unlike the one we're used to now, and don't mention ashes at all, many of them also don't mention falling down in any sense whatsoever" information, with various versions collected both historically and from modern oral tradition.
No evidence for the plague story whatsoever.
The only interesting thing about it is that people do insist on telling their children about the plague story. That would make for an interesting study: why do we do this to our kids? It's bad enough we sing them songs about death (rock-a-bye-baby) and eyes being gouged out (hush-a-bye, don't you cry), but we turn honest-to-god innocent nursery rhymes into epidemics. I don't get it.
500 years from now, they'll be saying that the Hokey-Pokey (with slightly changed lyrics, of course) is obviously all about autism from that "horrible epidemic", see if they don't. Or maybe they'll pick epilipsy, but that's not quite common, is it? Bit of nonsense, when it's clearly all about sex.
Unfortunately, somebody afterwards pulled out the story about "Ring around the Rosie" being about the Plague.
And again, I say, that's just an urban legend. I haven't done any firsthand research, and I don't intend to, because every last reference I've seen has scads of information of it's own, starting with the "nope, didn't see it written until centuries after the plague was gone" bit, through the "well, the older versions are very unlike the one we're used to now, and don't mention ashes at all, many of them also don't mention falling down in any sense whatsoever" information, with various versions collected both historically and from modern oral tradition.
No evidence for the plague story whatsoever.
The only interesting thing about it is that people do insist on telling their children about the plague story. That would make for an interesting study: why do we do this to our kids? It's bad enough we sing them songs about death (rock-a-bye-baby) and eyes being gouged out (hush-a-bye, don't you cry), but we turn honest-to-god innocent nursery rhymes into epidemics. I don't get it.
500 years from now, they'll be saying that the Hokey-Pokey (with slightly changed lyrics, of course) is obviously all about autism from that "horrible epidemic", see if they don't. Or maybe they'll pick epilipsy, but that's not quite common, is it? Bit of nonsense, when it's clearly all about sex.
