![]() Variations, especially more literal ones, were identified and noted with the literal falling down that would sever the connections to the game-rhyme. Īccording to Games and Songs of American Children, published in 1883, the "rosie" was a reference to the French word for rose tree and the children would dance and stoop to the person in the center. In 1892, the American writer, Eugene Field wrote a poem titled Teeny-Weeny that specifically referred to fay folk playing ring-a-rosie. Another suggestion is more literal, that it was making a "ring" around the roses and bowing with the "all fall down" as a curtsy. The theory states that it is in reference to Pagan myths and cited a passage which states, "Gifted children of fortune have the power to laugh roses, as Freyja wept gold." It claimed the first instance to be indicative of pagan beings of light. In 1898, A Dictionary of British Folklore contained the belief that an explanation of the game was of pagan origin, based on the Sheffield Glossary comparison of Jacob Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie. Folklore scholars, however, regard the Great Plague explanation, that has been the most common since the mid-20th century, as baseless. The origins and meanings of the game have long been unknown and subject to speculation. ![]() Leslie Brooke (1862–1940) for "All Tumble Down" from Anon, Ring O' Roses (1922) Two other artists connected with the Newlyn School also depicted the game: Elizabeth Adela Forbes in 1880 and Harold Harvey later. In Thomas Webster's "Ring o' Roses" of about 1850 the children dance to the music of a seated clarinetist, while in Frederick Morgan's "Ring a Ring of Roses" (the title under which it was exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1885) the children dance around a tree. The words to which these children danced are not referred to, but their opening is quoted by the English artists who pictured similar scenes in the 19th century. The Florentine Raffaello Sorbi transported the scene to the Renaissance in his 1877 Girotondo (Round-dance), in which young maidens circle a child at the center to an instrumental accompaniment. For example, Hans Thoma's Kinderreigen (children dancing in a ring) of 1872 takes place in an Alpine meadow, while his later version of the game has the children dancing round a tree. Paintings Įvidence of similar children's round-dances appears in continental paintings. Other European singing games with a strong resemblance include " Roze, roze, meie" ("Rose, rose, May") from The Netherlands with a similar tune to "Ring a ring o' roses" and " Gira, gira rosa" ("Circle, circle, rose"), recorded in Venice in 1874, in which girls danced around the girl in the middle who skipped and curtsied as demanded by the verses and at the end kissed the one she liked best, so choosing her for the middle. Swiss versions have the children dancing round a rosebush. – in translation: "A ring, a ring o' roses,/ Lovely apricots,/ Violets blue, forget-me-nots,/ Sit down, children all!"
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