Nursery Rhyme "Ring-a-ring o' roses" is related to the Great Plague of England? Shocking!
Out of the blue, a childhood nursery rhyme jumped into Sienna’s mind: Ring around the rosie. A pocketful of posies. Ashes, ashes. We all fall down.
She used to recite the poem as a schoolgirl in England until she heard that it derived from the Great Plague of London in 1665. Allegedly, a ring around the rosie was a reference to a rose-colored pustule on the skin that developed a ring around it and indicated that one was infected. Sufferers would carry a pocketful of posies in an effort to mask the smell of their own decaying bodies as well as the stench of the city itself, where hundreds of plague victims dropped dead daily, their bodies then cremated. Ashes, ashes. We all fall down.
No comments:
Post a Comment