1. Ring Around The Rosie Isn't About The Black Death, It's About Religious Persecution
When it comes to songs with disturbing histories, the fact that's most frequently wheeled out is that Ring Around The Rosie is about children with the plague, and that their sneezing and falling down at the end is the result of a small bout of Black Death. It's a fairly convincing interpretation, but it's much less fascinating than the truth. Folklorist Philip Hiscock believes that the rhyme almost certainly originates from a religious ban on dancing. It wasn't uncommon for the church to ban dancing in the Nineteenth century, as it supposedly distracted from God and was time that might better have been used praying or learning about the Bible. But there was a loophole to this ban on dancing. People were still able to engage in play-parties, which were made up of games played in a ring. These games were basically the same as dancing only without music and the word dancing, and became so popular that kids would join in too. In turn, this spawned the famous children's rhyme, a sort of taunt at the church.
Brian Wilson
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Commonly found reading, sitting firmly in a seat at the cinema (bottle of water and a Freddo bar, please) or listening to the Mountain Goats.
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Brian