Ringin Around

D has gotten into "Ring Around the Rosie" lately. I think they do this at my babysitters - and every once in a while he requests that we join hands with him and do this over and over...and over in our living room.

If you're like me, you have vague recollection of hearing someone tell you that this nursery rhyme is actually a horrifying fable about what happened during the Great Plague.

Here's the description I've found online (from Wikipedia):
Many have associated the poem with the Great Plague which happened in England in 1665, or with earlier outbreaks of the Black Death in England. Interpreters of the rhyme before World War II make no mention of this;[12] by 1951, however, it seems to have become well established as an explanation for the form of the rhyme that had become standard in the United Kingdom. Peter and Iona Opie remark: "The invariable sneezing and falling down in modern English versions have given would-be origin finders the opportunity to say that the rhyme dates back to the Great Plague. A rosy rash, they allege, was a symptom of the plague, posies of herbs were carried as protection and to ward off the smell of the disease. Sneezing or coughing was a final fatal symptom, and 'all fall down' was exactly what happened."[13][14] The line Ashes, Ashes in alternative versions of the rhyme is claimed to refer variously to cremation of the bodies, the burning of victims' houses, or blackening of their skin, and the theory has been adapted to be applied to other versions of the rhyme.[15] In its various forms, the interpretation has entered into popular culture and has been used elsewhere to make oblique reference to the plague.[16]

However - according to the internet rumor-squasher, Snopes.com this is absolutely not true...you can read about it here.

I don't know what I believe. I'm sure there's something to the rumors. However on Snopes you'll see they'll say that they say that this nursery rhyme would've had to carry over 5 centuries without anyone writing it down if this were true. So, I'm a skeptic. Maybe it's because my husband is a huge conspiracy theorist. I wish people would just leave well-enough alone with children's play. But I DO know the translation of the children's French song "Alouette" - which roughly is:
Little skylark, lovely little skylark
Little lark, I'll pluck your feathers off
I’ll pluck the feathers off your head
I’ll pluck the feathers off your head
Off your head - off your head
Little lark, little lark
O-o-o-o-oh

So - I'm a little disturbed already. But I'll keep dancing in circles with D as long as he wants me to. :)