Ring Around the Roses

"Ring around the roses,

A pocketful of posies,

Ashes, ashes,

We all fall down."

As I walked by the playground, I heard a group of little children chanting this rhyme at the top of their voices with their hands linked to form a circle. I guess this is perfectly normal child behaviour. The thing is, when I was small, my grandmother never let me sing this rhyme and warned me to never join the other kids playing this game.

Orphaned at a very young age, I was brought up by a fairly superstitious grandmother. One day, I came back from kindergarten and starting to sing one of the nursery rhymes the children had taught me. "Ring around the roses, A pocket-" My grandmother came out from nowhere and screamed at me to shut up. I had never seen her so frightened in my life. She was always the calm and composed lady.

I was told to go to my room and was forbidden from singing that rhyme ever again. Later that night, my grandmother came into my room and comforted me for I was still badly shaken by the previous event. When I asked her about the rhyme, her jaw clenched but after a long period of silence, she told me the story.

The rhyme was badly associated with death, caused by the Great Plague of London in 1665. The first sentence, ring around the roses, basically meant to gather around a bed of roses planted on a grave. Posies from the second sentence refer to a kind of herb that was carried everywhere as protection because it was said that posies could act as a prevention from the disease. And the third sentence, ashes, ashes, is claimed to be referring to the cremation of the dead bodies. Finally, the last sentence, we all fall down, obviously meant that everyone died at the end.

Since then, whenever I hear the rhyme being sang, I see a horrible image in my mind. Four little children were in a huge, dark forest. And they were forming a circle with their hands linked and chanting the rhyme at the top of their voices. And then one by one, the children fall dead to their feet...