Given the controversy over "Ride a cock-horse" ... with bells on (Idioms) I thought it might be fun to take another example from the same source and see what the assembled Agorans think of this one.

Personally, the only thing I can see to object to is the rather unnecessary rendering of "roses" as "rosies". I wait with interest to see what comes.

Ring a ring o’ rosies
A pocketful of posies
"Atishoo, Atishoo"
We all fall down!

Origins in English History
The lyrics to this nursery rhyme has its origins as a children’s ring game. The period in history  dates back to the great plague of London in 1665 (bubonic plague). The symptoms of the plague included a raised red rash on the skin (Ring a ring o’ rosies) and violent sneezing (Atishoo, Atishoo) A pouch of sweet smelling herbs or posies were carried due to the belief that the disease was transmitted by bad smells. The death rate was over 60% and the plage [sic] was only halted by the Great Fire of London in 1666 which killed the rats which carried the disease which had been transmitting it to water sources.

(from here)

"Ring around the Rosie" Variations

We always said:

"Ring around the rosie,
Pocket full of posies,
Ashes, Ashes,
We all fall down!"

Sitran

"Ring a ring o’ rosies,
As the light declines,
I’ll remember Dublin city
In the rare ould times"

(Pete St. John)

I find it fascinating that I learned exactly the same version that Sitran posted… and yet I never read it!  At the age we were learning it, that type of thing was engrained through oral repetition, so how remarkable it is that we should have learned the same version!

:o

-Tim

It is amazing, Tim.

What I find interesting as I read DerekB’s version, was that I had no idea what  "Atishoo, Atishoo"  meant, and that part had "changed" in my (American) version to something intelligble "Ashes, Ashes," although now I can plainly see that "atishoo" means "atchew (sp?)" (the sound of a sneeze)!

Sitran