Many nursery rhymes have become embedded within mainstream culture simply by being passed from generation to generation, “Ring Around the Rosie” being one of them. The complete, common American saying goes:

“Ring around the Rosie / A pocket full of posies / Ashes! Ashes! / We all fall down!”

Whenever children play this and chant this, it is filled with an aura of childlike wonder and glee. They spin in a circle, hands, and arms linked, and fall down on cue. However, the common history of this childhood rhyme goes that it represents the bubonic plague.

The bubonic plague, a highly lethal illness, was the catalyst of the Black Death in the 14th century, where it killed an estimated 25 million people, one-third of the entire European population at the time. 

As the folklore goes, the “rosies” were infected sores, the “pocket full of posies” were flowers stuffed into dead victims’ pockets to lessen the stench of death, the “Ashes! Ashes!” represented the cremation of the dead, and the “We all fall down!” represented death. 

However, this interpretation might not be as true as it is believed to be. 

The first recorded version of this nursery rhyme originated in the late 1800s, believed to be of German origin. This proves a bit of a conundrum; its proposed meaning of the Black Death occurred in the 1300s, nearly 500 years prior. 

In fact, many modern theories chalk it “ring around the rosie” to being about love and courtship, and the spinning in a circle to be an effort to evade a Protestant dancing ban that swept across America and Europe at the time.

As it is currently, despite the commonly guessed meaning of the nursery rhyme, it does not secretly mean death incarnate. In reality, it means the exact opposite.