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Author
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Comment
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lilly0608
Registered User
(8/4/05 11:42 am)
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ring around the rosie
does anyone know the 2nd verse
"the cows are in the meadow
eating butter cups
(something)
we all stand up
Lilly
"If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito."Bette Reese |
DerekJ
Unregistered User
(8/4/05 1:00 pm)
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Re: ring around the rosie
Generally, it's supposed to be the same "Ashes, ashes", although most UK versions in the last century seem to have changed the chorus to the safer "A tissue, a tissue!"
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Lamplighter
Registered User
(8/5/05 4:00 am)
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Is it really about the plague?
This little ditty has many disguises and variants. Here are just some of them:
William Wells Newell had two verses:
Ring a ring a rosie,
A bottle full of posie,
All the girls in our town,
Ring for little Josie.
Round the ring of roses,
Pots full of posies,
The one stoops the last
Shall tell whom she loves the best.
Charlotte Sophia Burne, writing in the same year 1883, sticks with one:
Ring-a-ring o' roses,
A pocket full of posies,
One for Jack, and one for Jim,
And one for little Moses.
A-tischa! A-tischa! A-tischa!
As does Alice Gomme at the turn of the twentieth century:
Ring, a ring o' roses,
A pocket full o' posies,
Up-stairs and down-stairs,
In my lady's chamber --
Husher! Husher! Cuckoo!
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.
To me, this sounds suspiciously like the "discovery," several decades after the fact that L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was written as a coded parable about Populism. How come no contemporaries of Baum -- those much closer in time and place to what he was writing about -- ever noticed this? The answer is that Baum merely authored a children's book, and it was only much later that someone invented a fanciful interpretation of it -- an interpretation that has become more and more layered and embellished over the years and has now become widely accepted as "fact" despite all evidence to the contrary.
It isn't difficult to imagine that such a process has been applied to "Ring around the Rosie" as well, especially since we humans have such a fondness for trying to make sense of the nonsensical, seeking to find order in randomness, and especially for discovering and sharing secrets. The older the secret, the better (because age demonstrates the secret has eluded so many others before us), and so we've read "hidden" meanings into all sorts of innocuous nursery rhymes: The dish who ran away with the spoon in "Hey Diddle, Diddle" is really Queen Elizabeth I (or Catherine of Aragon or Catherine the Great), or "Humpty Dumpty" and "The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe" describe the "spread and fragmentation of the British Empire." (The process is aided by a general consensus that some nursery rhymes, such as "Old King Cole," quite likely were actually based on real historical figures.)
So does the plague story really stand up?
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Lamplighter
Registered User
(8/5/05 4:10 am)
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On topic this time...
And I realise I haven’t answered your question…
It may have it’s origins in a singing game played by children whereby the “all fall down” was actually a curtsey or bow, and a second verse then commands the players to get up again:
2. The cows are in the meadow
Lying fast asleep
Atishoo! Atishoo!
We all get up again!
2. The cows are in the meadow
Eating buttercups
Thunder! Lightening!
We all get up
2. Ashes in the water,
ashes in the sea.
We all jump up
with a one, two, three!”
2. Little Sally Waters
Sitting in a saucer
Weeping and moaning
Like a turtle dove.
Rise, Sally, rise
Wipe you weeping eyes
Fly to the east, fly to the west
Fly to the one that you love best
And so on and so forth… your own local children will have their own unique version of the rhyme.
So back to my aside question: Is it really about the plague?
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healingbeing
Unregistered User
(8/7/05 12:43 pm)
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Ring a ring o roses
Hello there
My understanding is that this comes from the plague aswell, and as a young child we sang the second verse as;
The cows are in the meadow
Eating buttercups
A tissue a tissue!
We all stand up
Having asked friends this weekend about this subject, they also remarked that this was also used in the War - i.e. in Engalnd during World War 2
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DerekJ
Unregistered User
(8/7/05 3:07 pm)
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Re: Is it really about the plague?
Quote:
The older the secret, the better (because age demonstrates the secret has eluded so many others before us), and so we've read "hidden" meanings into all sorts of innocuous nursery rhymes: The dish who ran away with the spoon in "Hey Diddle, Diddle" is really Queen Elizabeth I (or Catherine of Aragon or Catherine the Great), or "Humpty Dumpty" and "The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe" describe the "spread and fragmentation of the British Empire." (The process is aided by a general consensus that some nursery rhymes, such as "Old King Cole," quite likely were actually based on real historical figures.)
So does the plague story really stand up?
Well--taking into account the Georgy Porgy->George IV and Mary Quite Contrary->Queen of Scots theories--there's always the "Okay, if they're not historical coded editorials, any ideas what the heck the are supposed to be?"
Remember, in the days before freedom of the press (or even before the press), popular opposing political opinion had to spread by word of mouth, but be vague enough to avoid evidence and not name names...Back then, to be criminally charged as a "Common rhymer" was literally a charge of sedition.
And okay, whoever came up wtih the "Humpty->England" one was ambitously wrong (that's a new one...Has anyone ever not assumed the egg-riddle?)--But are we supposed to accept the theory that someone just sat down and songwrote some nonsense about "sixpence" and "four & twenty blackbirds set before the king", and it wasn't an axe-dodging news bulletin about a bribed land-grab of twenty-four territories?
Playing probability against the bell curve of other examples, if "Rosie" looks like the plague and sounds like the plague, the likelihood that it isn't the plague is prohibitively longshot.
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Writerpatrick
Registered User
(8/7/05 4:30 pm)
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Re: Is it really about the plague?
I think Hey Diddle Diddle may be a rhyme to help children remember the placement of a dinner place.
Cat=fork (tines representing whiskers)
Fiddle=knife (representing the bow)
Cow over moon=glass (milk) placed above plate
little dog= (dog-eared) knapkin?
dish and spoon are obvious
Of course that's just one interpretation.
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DerekJ
Unregistered User
(8/7/05 4:43 pm)
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Re: Is it really about the plague?
Quote:
I think Hey Diddle Diddle may be a rhyme to help children remember the placement of a dinner place.
Cat=fork (tines representing whiskers)
Fiddle=knife (representing the bow)
(I prefer Benny Hill's interpretation, myself:
"Wonder if he knew that part of his brother was in the string?"
)
Quote:
Cow jumps over moon
("Maybe the farmer's hands were cold?")
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Lamplighter
Registered User
(8/8/05 2:49 am)
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Four and Twenty Blackbirds
“Sing a song of sixpence”…
I like the interpretation that the ditty is a satirical attack on a particularly bad poet laureate, Henry James Pye, and a particularly awful royal birthday ode he wrote dealing with blackbirds. I have been seeking this original poem, but have drawn a blank. Can anyone else remember how it goes?
Download page 86-90 of www.gutenberg.org/etext/10456 for a wonderful assessment of Pye’s work in relation to other laureates of the time.
I like the cutlery aide memoir idea too, but perhaps this is a later interpretation of the ditty?
And while we're onto comedians, listen to Stuart Lee's interpretation of Edward Lear's classic: www.fistoffun.net/downloads-peagreenboat.htm
PS does anyone remember the hoax meaning about pirates attached to "Ring-ring-a-rosie"?
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Random
Registered User
(8/8/05 12:55 pm)
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re: Four and Twenty Blackbirds
Snopes.com has a page debunking
the Ring
Around the Rosie/plague idea (which Lamplighter has already
quoted, albeit without credit) and another page with a Sing
a Song of Sixpence/pirates hoax (please note that although the
page claims the item to be true, it is not, as explained beyond
the
'More information about this page' link at the bottom). It's
not exactly a Ring Around the Rosie/pirate hoax, but it's close.
I hadn't heard of a second verse, so this is an interesting thread to me.
Edited by: Random at: 8/8/05 12:56 pm
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deathcookie
Registered User
(8/8/05 6:34 pm)
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the plague?
I have to agree with Lamplighter. 600 years is a long time to pass before someone makes a connection between "Ring around the Rosie" and the plague, and it does make you wonder if it's not just modern sensibility being incorrectly applied. Certainly there are tales and poems that upon inspection are veiled references to actual tragedies, but I also think it's true that "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."
I'm reminded of many urban legends that have been fed to me over the years claiming "this is what this song/poem/phrase ACTUALLY means," only to discover after research that the explanation is complete baloney.
-Callie
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janeyolen
Registered User
(8/9/05 4:57 am)
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Re: the plague?
i believe we have had at least one thread on this same subject before.
And though I am NOT an expert on "Rng Around the Rosie", I have read enough researchers poo-poohing the connection to the plague to have some doubts myself. I believe the Opies were not convinced as well.
Jane
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Writerpatrick
Registered User
(8/10/05 8:48 am)
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Re: the plague?
What likely happened, as often happens in folklore, is that one version dealing with the plague developed from an earlier version of the rhyme.
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Rosemary Lake
Registered User
(8/11/05 7:44 pm)
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probability
<i> But are we supposed to accept the theory that someone just sat down and songwrote some nonsense about "sixpence" and "four & twenty blackbirds set before the king", and it wasn't an axe-dodging news bulletin about a bribed land-grab of twenty-four territories? </i>
Do we know that any one person just sat down and wrote it at all?
<i> Playing probability against the bell curve of other examples, if "Rosie" looks like the plague and sounds like the plague, the likelihood that it isn't the plague is prohibitively longshot. </i>
But why would something about the plague need to be cryptic to dodge axes? Was the plague a politically dangerous topic?
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(8/12/05 2:26 am)
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Re: probability
Well, but I never thought "Ring around the rosie" was particularly cryptic. There's the rosie, the bubo. And the posey, which I'm given to understand could refer to poseys people carried around in the belief they would ward off the illness. "Ashes, ashes" seems pretty self-explanatory to me, as does "we all fall down/dead." It doesn't seem cryptic in context; just as time passes and we were less familiar with the context.
It may be an urban legend, but it's one I like.
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Dark Siren
Unregistered User
(8/12/05 2:01 pm)
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Re: probability
I always learned:
"Ring-a-ring a' rosies
A pocket full o' posies
A tissue!A tissue!
We all fall down.
The cows are in the meadow
Eating buttercups.
A tissue!A tissue!
We all get up."
I didn't know it was a bout the plague until Primary 4,where my teacher was telling the younger half(we were a composite of P3/4)about the hidden meanings in nursery rhymes,and I eavesdropped.
I get roses and posies and the dead part,and I think tissue means you've caught it,or you're holding a tissue to your mouth so as not to catch it - what I don't get is how it's supposed to be safer than "Ashes!Ashes!",and what the second part means.Anyone know?
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Rosemary Lake
Registered User
(8/13/05 1:27 pm)
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a tissue
I'd think it more likely 'a tissue' = 'atishoo'. 'Atishoo' might have turned into 'ashes' in some dialects; I didn't associate it with sound of a sneeze at first. (In my dialect that's 'a-choo'.)
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catja1
Registered User
(8/14/05 5:37 pm)
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Re: Is it really about the plague?
No, the plague story doesn't stand up. It's an invented bit of folklore about folklore -- that interpretation of the rhyme doesn't appear until, as Lamplighter said, 1961. According to Jacqueline Simpson in her Dictionary of English Folklore, the plague link is "almost certainly nonsense." Contemporary accounts of plague (either the 1348-49 Black Death or the 1665 London plague -- the folklore-about-folklore rarely specifies, just saying "The Plague") don't mention any version of the rhyme at all. The earliest known version is the one Lamplighter quoted from Newell, which is an American version from 1790 ("ring for little Josie") that clearly has nothing to do with plague. And the rhyme isn't recorded in its most popular form until the 1880s. The plague interpretation is a romantic bit of fluff that appears, on the surface, to make sense, so it became popular. But there's not a single shred of evidence for it, and quite a bit against it.
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Rosemary Lake
Registered User
(8/14/05 9:35 pm)
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so then...
It would seem odd for children to sing something that was 'really' about sores and such. How long has 'atishoo' been in it, or 'A-tischa'? Could that have had something to do with 'a tisket, a tasket'?
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catja1
Registered User
(8/15/05 10:58 am)
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Re: so then...
*g* Generally, if children are going to knowingly sing about sores, they'll... sing about sores. And add dripping pus and such, to make it more interesting. "Greasy grimy gopher guts," anyone? I think much of the power of the "it's really about the PLAGUE!!1!" story is adults' titllation and horror at the juxtaposition of "innocent children's song" with mass death. Children themselves generally have no qualms about that sort of thing, because they're not getting off on the "innocence" angle the way adults are.
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DividedSelf
Registered User
(8/15/05 11:54 am)
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Playground culture
I remember reading somewhere that certain games and language have gone through their own child-play-based evolution, passed through centuries from one age group to the next. "Barleys" being the famous example, supposedly coming from knightly language, either "parlez" or "bar lay".
So either... (1) this is just another piece of folklore about folklore or (2) children do use words (and, by extension, rhymes) without knowledge of their original meaning.
I'd like to think (2) - after all, most of us use words without knowledge of their original meaning (frequently without knowledge of their current meaning in any definitive sense) - and I love the idea of a separate children's folklore.
In any case "ring a roses" (as we sang it) certainly didn't convey anything to us except something about roses and falling down... So whatever it originally meant was lost on us.
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