Ring O' Roses

Nursery rhymes don't survive transatlantic voyages intact. Like all immigrants to the New World, they are integrated, adapted, homogenised, sanitised, Hollywoodised.

The classic "Ring o' Roses" as I learnt it goes like this:

Ring a-ring o' roses,

A pocketful of posies,

Atishoo! Atishoo!

We all fall down.

in reference to (I thought) the ravages of the Black Death and the fact that it gave sufferers a rosey rash on their neck, that people carried flowers (i.e. posies) around to ward it off, and that the pneumonic plague made them sneeze and eventually fall down dead.

The New World version goes like this:

Ring around the rosey,

A pocket full of posies,

Ashes, ashes,

We all fall down.

In fact, the locals add a second, happy-ending verse which "shows" that everything is all right after all:

Cows are in the meadow,

Lying fast asleep,

Ashes, ashes,

We all get up again.

Next up: Humpty Dumpty only bruised his ego, the Grand Old of Duke of York simply made bad choices, and the spider tells Little Miss Muffet he merely wants a Green Card.