General Chat

when I do ring a ring a roses the second bit we sing fishes in the water fishes in the sea. Tiddler has started singing ashes in the water ashes in the sea. Went to Nursery today when afternoon group were out doing it and they do ashes which is where she has got it from, which do you use?

* dances around ring ring a roses ......* Fishes .....

It's Ashes..... the ashes of the people who were cremated after the caught the illness. (Was it the plague?) It was considered to be the only safe place fot their ashes.

Hi Dawn, I've always said Fishes----My daughter also says Fishes. C x

fishes tina x

I live in America and they say Ashes Ashes we all fall down. Suposed to represent the bodies being burnt. Fiona. xx

well that makes it clear then NOT lol

Sings song again.....And what Paul says does make a lot of sense.....however....' They all jump up with a 1 2 3...' does mean they are coming back..lol

Down at the bottom of the deep blue sea, catching fishes 1 2 3 That's what we sang. But Paul's explanation does make sense as it is a song from the time of the plague

A ring a ring of roses (The rash they got) A pocket full of posies (Thought to be a cure) Atishoo atishoo (Sneezing) We all fall down (dead) Ashes in the water (Ashes of the dead) Ashes in the sea We all jump up, ONE TWO THREE (In celebration that the plague is gone)

atishoo, atishoo, we all fall down sneezing was one of the symptoms of having the plague just before you died, hence atishoo, atishoo we all fall down. tina x

Ring a Ring O'Roses From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Redirected from Ring Around the Rosie) Jump to: navigation, search 'Ring a Ring O'Roses' or 'Ring Around the Rosey' is a nursery rhyme or children's song and game that first appeared in print in 1881 but may have been recited as early as the 1790s. In the 1881 edition of Mother Goose it appears as: Ring a ring o' roses, A pocketful of posies. Tisha! Tisha! We all fall down. In the UK, it is usually sung thus: Ring a ring o'roses A pocketful of posies ah-tishoo,ah-tishoo (imitative of sneezing) We all fall down. Several other verses exist, although they are not as commonly known: The King has sent his daughter To fetch a pail of water ah-tishoo, ah-tishoo We all fall down. The bird upon the steeple Sits high above the people ah-tishoo, ah-tishoo We all fall down. The cows are in the meadow Lying fast asleep ah-tishoo, ah-tishoo We all get up again. In the Midlands of the UK, a second verse is also added; Ashes in the water, ... all the children stoop down and swish their hands on the floor Ashes in the sea, ... continue the same motion We all jump up, With a one, two three! ... everyone jumps into the air with their hands up In Ireland, it is usually sung thus: Ring around the 'rosies A pocketful of posies ah-tishoo, ah-tishoo (imitative of sneezing) We all fall down. The most common variation of the song in the USA: Ring around the rosey Pocket full of posies Ashes, ashes They (or We) all fall down In the Southern U.S. (most specifically, in Louisiana), it is usually sung as thus: Ring around the rosey Pocket full of posies Upstairs, downstairs We all fall down In Australia, it is usually sung thus: A ring around the rosies A pocketful of posies ah-tishoo, ah-tishoo (imitative of sneezing) We all fall down, We all fall down. Sometimes the third line is changed to: Husha, husha As opposed to ashes, ashes or a variation thereof. Sometimes the verses are added: Cows in the meadow Eating buttercup One step, two step We all pop up or: Bringing up the posies We all pop up! Children stand in a circle holding hands and skipping in one direction, clockwise or counter-clockwise, as they sing the song. At the end of the last line, the group falls down into a heap. [edit] Plague interpretation A common conjecture is that the rhyme is somehow connected to the Great Plague of London in 1665, or perhaps earlier outbreaks of bubonic plague in England. This story is entirely unsupported by textual sources, as there is no mention of the verses, nor written evidence of their existence, before 1881. This idea, however, remains entrenched in the imagination of many. Detailed explanations have evolved to explain the different parts of the poem. For example, the first line evokes the round red rash that would break out on the skin of plague victims. The second line's 'pocket full of posies' would have been a pocket in the garment of a victim filled with something fragrant, such as flowers that aimed to conceal the smell from the sores and the dying people. A second creative explanation for this line is that it referred to the purported belief that fresh-smelling flowers, nosegays, and pomanders would purify the air around them thus warding off disease. A third possibility includes the idea that 'posies' are derived from an Old English word for pus, in which case the pocket would be referring to the swelling sore. 'Ashes, ashes' would refer to when people alive and dead were gathered up into piles and lit on fire in a belief that burning the diseased bodies would not allow the disease to spread. Several alternate endings to the song exist, one being: 'atishoo, atishoo, we all fall down', intepreted as invoking the sneezing before 'we all fall down', the eventual succumbing to death. The first time the nursery rhyme was suggested to be plague related seems to be in 1961, James Leasor's book The Plague and the Fire. However, it is not clear whether Leasor concocted the plague interpretation on his own. The rhyme was first published in Kate Greenaway's Mother Goose or The Old Nursery Rhymes (1881), centuries after the plague swept Europe; and there is no evidence of an earlier version. Further, many early versions of the rhyme omit the lines used to support these refereces to the plague. The plague connection is considered false by scholars of folklore

Well they say you learn something new everyday! I never knew that there was a second verse! I must have had a deprived childhood ! lol Ang x

ooooooooo ......Thankyou for clearing that It never dawned on me it was the plague...I thought it was pagan dance or something...

Well you really do learn something new every day. I always thought it was Smallpox & that the verse about cows was because the Smallpox vaccine was got from Cowpox.

Its ashes........from whence they burned all the bodies that died from the black plague. what a nice nursery song!! Lol steph x

Ashes...never heared of it being Fishes!