While the rain is keeping us indoors, we are busying ourselves planting Holy Basil in egg cartons for transplanting in May and decorating upcycled yogurt containers and jars for marigold seedlings. The craft is simple and can be done with materials you probably have around the house: containers to be reused, school glue, paint brush, tissue paper, and scissors.
A finger game from our late spring circle ties in well with this activity, and it’s simple enough to make up your own gestures.
Dig a little hole, Plant a little seed. Pour a little water, Pull a little weed. Chase a little bug, Heigh-ho, there he goes. Give a little sunshine, Grow a little rose.
Digging into the urban legend of a children’s circle game.
Ring-around-the-Rosie is a popular game for the children to play in the Spring. The version that we play at school has a second verse that rectifies the legendary darkness of the first verse, but we were curious about the truth of its story, so we asked Mama Christina to do a little digging for us.
Ring around the rosie, A pocket full of posies Ashes, Ashes, We all fall down. The cows are in the meadow Eating buttercups. Thunder, lightning, We all stand up!
While the prevailing urban legend assigns the origin of “Ring around the Rosie” to plague years, (17th century London or the Black Death in the 14th century), the game does not show up until 200 years after the London plague and 500 years after the Black Death. Phrases in “Ring around the Rosie” have been assigned meaning based upon this theory (again without substantiation): we all fall down= we all die and pocket full of posies=carrying around little flower bundles to ward off illness and/or to obscure the stench of dead bodies–eeesh, that is heavy.
Philip Hiscock, from the Department of Folklore at Memorial University in Newfoundland, is a folklorist who writes about all sorts of edgy things like the post-Moratorium fisherman’s choir living there. (If that isn’t cool, then I’m not sure what is.) In a letter to the editor of the Washington Post, he simply states that we do not know the origin of this children’s game but the plague theory is unfounded.
Other theories about the origin go back to May Day celebrations and other pagan dances. One theorist wondered if Protestant hexes on dancing may have caused children’s games to be used by teens to get some dancing in under the radar, so to speak. There are versions of this game in Holland-Roze Roze Meie, Germany-Ringel Ringel Rosen, and Italian-Gira Gira Rosa; though, it was popularized in England, according to Hiscock, in the late 19th century. Theories abound that the game itself of “Ring around the Rosie” may reside in oral storytelling. Just as fairy tales, these stories persisted in the memories of multiple storytellers’ versions for centuries before they were committed to writing and preserved for future storytellers.
Here is the earliest version of the song from the German from 1792, with its English translation following:
“Ringel ringel reihen, Wir sind der Kinder dreien, sitzen unter’m Hollerbusch Und machen alle Husch husch husch!” “A ring, a ring, a round dance, We are the children three, we sit under the elderbush, and all go hush, hush, hush!”
Here is an 1855 English language version of the song from a novel called The Old Homestead:
“A ring – a ring of roses, Laps full of posies; Awake – awake! Now come and make A ring – a ring of roses.”
While we continue to wonder about the true origin of “Ring around the Rosie,” it’s fascinating and comforting to imagine that the game’s originators may have been doing just what we are doing today- trying to bring light and levity to a bleak situation.