NationStates Jolt Archive

Im sure alot of you know this, but most so-called childrens rhymes are based around some pretty horrible events. Same with most of the stories, since they were originaly targetted to adults (Read: Jack the Giant Killer).

First off:
Ring around the Rosey:
Black Death, the song is basicaly the sequence of events.
First symptoms included sores with red rings(Ring around the rosey), which smelled rather bad, so people would stuff sweet-smelling herbs in their pockets, this was also thought to be a cure in some cases (Pocket full of posies), and people who died of the Plauge were burned to stop the diseases spread (Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.)

The Pied Piper:
Based around the little-known Childrens Crusade. I think it was between the First and Second crusades that a child from Germany or France came forward saying that God had sent him a message to lead Europes children to retake the Holy Land, and people belived him.
Nearly 10,000 children joined him, most of them died on the way, the remiainder were killed or enslaved by the Arabs.
It was later revealed that the childs father had pushed him to excel at everything, leading to the whole thing, he was lynched by an angry mob.

Jack and Jill:
Refers to an adulturous couple, way-back-when a adultry was punished by putting the couple in a ox-yoke and forcing them to carry water up a hill, no wonder they fell and broke their crowns.

Humpty Dumpty:
Humpty Dumpty referred to King Richard III of England, the hunchbacked monarch, whose horse was named "Wall". During the battle of Bosworth Field, He fell off of his steed and was said to have been "hacked into pieces".

The 'original' French version translates (Literaly) to:
Little man of little man, waits for himself, does not swallow
Little man of little man, by degrees of stuttering madwomen
Anal two that knots bears, anal two that leads
Strike from a louse small volume any watchman with a girdle

Wierd, eh?

Im sure somebody here has a copy of Grims Fairy Tails and can give us a few good accounts.

I knew Jack and Jill were up to something!

First off:
Ring around the Rosey:
Black Death, the song is basicaly the sequence of events.
First symptoms included sores with red rings(Ring around the rosey), which smelled rather bad, so people would stuff sweet-smelling herbs in their pockets, this was also thought to be a cure in some cases (Pocket full of posies), and people who died of the Plauge were burned to stop the diseases spread (Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.)

wasnt the last line atishoo atishoo we all fall down, referring to the sneezing prior to death. After all it wouldnt make much sense to have the ashes part before they actually fell over and died would it. I have also heard that the ring around the rosey part referred in part to rosary beads but i'm not too certain on that one.

Ring around the Rosies symbolizing the Black Plague has been debunked multiple times.

Humpty Dumpty is believed to refer to a cannon.

what about the lady in the shoe?

Im sure alot of you know this, but most so-called childrens rhymes are based around some pretty horrible events. Same with most of the stories, since they were originaly targetted to adults (Read: Jack the Giant Killer).

First off:
Ring around the Rosey:
Black Death, the song is basicaly the sequence of events.
First symptoms included sores with red rings(Ring around the rosey), which smelled rather bad, so people would stuff sweet-smelling herbs in their pockets, this was also thought to be a cure in some cases (Pocket full of posies), and people who died of the Plauge were burned to stop the diseases spread (Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.)
Myth. http://www.snopes.com/language/literary/rosie.htm

The Pied Piper:
Based around the little-known Childrens Crusade. I think it was between the First and Second crusades that a child from Germany or France came forward saying that God had sent him a message to lead Europes children to retake the Holy Land, and people belived him.
Nearly 10,000 children joined him, most of them died on the way, the remiainder were killed or enslaved by the Arabs.
It was later revealed that the childs father had pushed him to excel at everything, leading to the whole thing, he was lynched by an angry mob. Here is a different story, with references. http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mpiedpiper.html

Jack and Jill:
Refers to an adulturous couple, way-back-when a adultry was punished by putting the couple in a ox-yoke and forcing them to carry water up a hill, no wonder they fell and broke their crowns.
http://www.rhymes.org.uk/jack_and_jill.htm <-- a differing view


Humpty Dumpty:
Humpty Dumpty referred to King Richard III of England, the hunchbacked monarch, whose horse was named "Wall". During the battle of Bosworth Field, He fell off of his steed and was said to have been "hacked into pieces". Again, an alternate explanation
http://www.rhymes.org.uk/humpty_dumpty.htm

The 'original' French version translates (Literaly) to:
Little man of little man, waits for himself, does not swallow
Little man of little man, by degrees of stuttering madwomen
Anal two that knots bears, anal two that leads
Strike from a louse small volume any watchman with a girdle <-- Which Rhyme is this?

Wierd, eh?

Im sure somebody here has a copy of Grims Fairy Tails and can give us a few good accounts.

These don't appear in Grimms.

Well, you people are no fun :P

Ring around the Rosies symbolizing the Black Plague has been debunked multiple times.

I was told the plague story by a very respectable proffessor in early modern european history so I would be interested in seeing who has debunked it. I was taught that it came out of the 17th centuty London outbreaks rather than the numerous 12th and 13th century outbreaks.

I was told the plague story by a very respectable proffessor in early modern european history so I would be interested in seeing who has debunked it. I was taught that it came out of the 17th centuty London outbreaks rather than the numerous 12th and 13th century outbreaks.

The key points in the debunking (http://www.snopes.com/language/literary/rosie.htm) are:
Although folklorists have been collecting and setting down in print bits of oral tradition such as nursery rhymes and fairy tales for hundreds of years, the earliest print appearance of "Ring Around the Rosie" did not occur until the publication of Kate Greenaway's Mother Goose or The Old Nursery Rhymes in 1881. For the "plague" explanation of "Ring Around the Rosie" to be true, we have to believe that children were reciting this nursery rhyme continuously for over five centuries, yet not one person in that five hundred year span found it popular enough to merit writing it down. (How anyone could credibly assert that a rhyme which didn't appear in print until 1881 actually "began about 1347" is a mystery. If the rhyme were really this old, then "Ring Around the Rosie" antedates even Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and therefore we would have examples of this rhyme in Middle English as well as Modern English forms.)
and
Children were apparently reciting this plague-inspired nursery rhyme for over six hundred years before someone finally figured out what they were talking about, as the first known mention of a plague interpretation of "Ring Around the Rosie" didn't show up until James Leasor published The Plague and the Fire in 1961.

This is the explanation given:
So, what does "Ring Around the Rosie" mean, then? Folklorist Philip Hiscock suggests:

The more likely explanation is to be found in the religious ban on dancing among many Protestants in the nineteenth century, in Britain as well as here in North America. Adolescents found a way around the dancing ban with what was called in the United States the "play-party." Play-parties consisted of ring games which differed from square dances only in their name and their lack of musical accompaniment. They were hugely popular, and younger children got into the act, too. Some modern nursery games, particularly those which involve rings of children, derive from these play-party games. "Little Sally Saucer" (or "Sally Waters") is one of them, and "Ring Around the Rosie" seems to be another. The rings referred to in the rhymes are literally the rings formed by the playing children. "Ashes, ashes" probably comes from something like "Husha, husha" (another common variant) which refers to stopping the ring and falling silent. And the falling down refers to the jumble of bodies in that ring when they let go of each other and throw themselves into the circle.


Snopes generally is well researched. Here is the bibliography in that debunking:
Bowman, Marion. "Ring-a-Ring-a-Roses."
Talking Folklore. August 1989 (pp. 1-14).

Burne, Charlotte Sophia. Shropshire Folk-Lore: A Sheaf of Gleaning.
London: Trübner & Co., 1883.

Delamar, Gloria T. Mother Goose: From Nursery to Literature.
Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 1987.

Gomme, Alice Bertha. The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland.
New York: Dover Publications, 1964. ISBN 0-500-27316-2.

Greenaway, Kate. Mother Goose or The Old Nursery Rhymes.
London: George Routledge and Sons, 1881.

Hiscock, Philip. "Said and Done."
[St. John's] Sunday Express. 27 January 1991.

Leasor, James. The Plague and the Fire.
New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961.

Mansfield, Ken. The Beatles, the Bible, and Bodega Bay.
Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2000. ISBN 0-8054-2289-7 (pp. 220-221).

Morgan, Hal and Kerry Tucker. More Rumor!
New York: Penguin Books, 1987. ISBN 0-14-009720-1 (pp. 92-93).

Newell, William Wells. Games and Songs of American Children.
New York: Harper and Brothers, 1883.

Opie, Iona and Peter. The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes [2nd Edition].
New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Slack, Paul. The Impact of the Plague in Tudor and Stuart England.
Oxford Univ. Press, 1990. ISBN 0-19-820213.

Varasdi, J. Allen. Myth Information.
New York: Ballantine Books, 1989. ISBN 0-345-35985-2 (pp. 205-206).

Also told in:

Butler, William S. and L. Douglas Keeney. Secret Messages.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001. ISBN 0-684-86998-5 (p. 114-115).