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<\/a><\/p>\nIt\u2019s Ash Wednesday, a day for repentance and sober reflection, launching the season of Lent.\u00a0 Retired literature professor that I am, I\u2019m alert to imagery, so the day makes me think of ashes and literary portrayals of ashes.\u00a0 And on this day the children\u2019s song and game always comes to mind:<\/p>\n
Ring around the rosie,
\nA pocket full of posies.
\nAshes! Ashes!
\nWe all fall down!<\/p><\/blockquote>\nI can still remember playing this in elementary school, us kids holding hands to form a circle, then running faster and faster in the ring to the point of everybody falling down with the last\u00a0 lines.<\/p>\n
\nThis song has since been somewhat spoiled by the claim that for all of its innocent cheer, it is really about dying from the plague.\u00a0 Supposedly, back in the Middle Ages when the plague stalked the earth and this song originated, one symptom of catching it was a red, \u201crosie\u201d sore with a ring around it.\u00a0 People would carry around a \u201cposie\u201d of certain flowers in the mistaken hope that they would protect from the disease.\u00a0 Another symptom was sneezing.\u00a0 \u201cAshes! Ashes!\u201d was actually something like \u201cAtchoo!\u00a0 Atchoo!\u201d\u00a0 And then, \u201cwe all fall down\u201d dead.<\/p>\n
I am happy to report that according to the Wikipedia article on the song, with the title of one of its variations \u201cRing a Ring o\u2019 Roses<\/a>,\u201d the plague connection is almost certainly a \u201cfolk etymology,\u201d an origin story that\u00a0 becomes popular but has no basis in fact.\u00a0 The entry gives multiple footnotes to folklore experts who give this reason why the plague interpretation isn\u2019t true:<\/p>\n
\n
- The plague explanation did not appear until the mid-twentieth century.[19]<\/a><\/sup><\/li>\n
- The symptoms described do not fit especially well with the Great Plague.[31]<\/a><\/sup>[36]<\/a><\/sup><\/li>\n
- The great variety of forms makes it unlikely that the modern form is the most ancient one, and the words on which the interpretation are based are not found in many of the earliest records of the rhyme (see above).[32]<\/a><\/sup>[37]<\/a><\/sup><\/li>\n
- European and 19th-century versions of the rhyme suggest that this \u201cfall\u201d was not a literal falling down, but a\u00a0curtsy<\/a>\u00a0or other form of bending movement that was common in other dramatic singing games.[38]<\/a><\/sup><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The third reason is the most telling.\u00a0 The song has many variations in many languages.\u00a0 Only American children sing \u201cring around the rosie.\u201d\u00a0 British children sing \u201cring-a-ring o\u2019 roses.\u201d\u00a0 But the oldest versions lack all of those alleged plague references!<\/p>\n
Not that folklore experts know what the silly lyrics mean, though there are various suggestions, some of which you can read about in the article.\u00a0 (In addition, I have heard that \u201cthe rosie\u201d refers to the rosary, so that the song becomes a Catholic jingle about the devotional practice of praying using a circle of beads to keep track of the prayer cycle.\u00a0 I suspect that\u2019 a folk etymology also.)<\/p>\n
I do not<\/em> believe that the song and game has anything to do with Ash Wednesday.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to start any other folk etymology.\u00a0 But it does conjure up a picture in my mind about this holiday.<\/p>\n
We are running around in circles, not getting much of anywhere, but going faster and faster.\u00a0 That is, we are busier and busier, as we pursue the ever-repeating cycles of our jobs and vocations;\u00a0the weeks, the months, and the years; the cycles of history.\u00a0 All of that seems futile to some people. Or, more positively, it is a game that we play.<\/p>\n
Then \u201cAshes! Ashes!\u201d\u00a0 The message of Ash Wednesday summons us out of our trivial preoccupations:\u00a0 \u201cYou are dust.\u00a0 And to dust you shall return.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all fall down.\u201d\u00a0 All of the cycles end, for us, when we die.\u00a0 And death should give us a perspective on our running around in circles, waking us up from our complacency, our pockets full of posies.<\/p>\n
This is the message of Law and the wages of sin.<\/p>\n
The cycle of the church year turns from the joy of Christmas and the light of Epiphany to the darker season of\u00a0 Lent, a time when we think about the state of our souls and our need for salvation.<\/p>\n
Then comes Easter.\u00a0 After \u201cwe all fall down,\u201d Jesus takes us by the hand and raises us back up, with Him.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Photo:\u00a0 Children playing Ring around the rosie, by Edwing Rosskam (1941) from U.S. Farm Security Administration\/Office of War Information Black & White Photographs http:\/\/www.loc.gov\/rr\/print\/res\/071_fsab.html via Picryl.\u00a0 Public Domain<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Contrary to what we have been told, “Ring around the Rosie” is NOT about dying of the plague. But it can help us meditate on Ash Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":65307,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,21,32],"tags":[52,13059,1280,13056],"class_list":["post-65301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-holidays","category-music","tag-ash-wednesday","tag-folk-etymology","tag-lent","tag-ring-around-the-rosie"],"yoast_head":"\n
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