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As promised, today I thought we would have a look at that general belief that the rhyme Ring a Ring a Roses tells the story of The Great Plague of London in 1665. Well, I spent a day studying the symptoms of The Bubonic Plague, which wasn't much fun, and trying to match them with the well known rhyme. That seemed to me to be a logical place to start. This is what I found for Pop Goes the Weasel [NB: This is the British version of the rhyme, Americans may remember different words]:

Ring-a-ring o' roses,
A pocketful of posies;
A-tishoo! A-tishoo!
We all fall down.

This rhyme usually accompanies a dancing game that ends with all the children falling to the ground, getting their clothes muddy and going home to a clout round the ear. Or at least that's how I remember it.

 ‘Ring-a-Ring o' Roses' is traditionally associated with the plague - the Great Plague of London in 1665 or the Black Death of the late 1340s - and it is easy to see why. A plague victim would show early symptoms of the disease in the form of red, circular rashes all over the body resembling wreaths of roses (Ring-a-ring o' roses). The rhyme also seems to reflect the superstition that if a person was to carry around a pouch, or ‘pocket', stuffed with herbs or ‘posies', there was less chance of infection (A pocketful of posies). Sneezing would be also be a symptom (A-tishoo! A-tishoo!), indicating that the person was in an advanced state of infection, certain to fall down (dead) very shortly afterwards. So far so neat.

Unfortunately this doesn't actually accord with the known symptoms of the disease. Between two and six days following infection, the illness becomes obvious in a person. The early signs are headaches, chills, high fever. No rosy rings. Following the fever would come the formation of buboes, an inflammatory swelling of the lymph glands in both the groin and armpits. There is no historical record that posies, herbs or any other flower were used as preventive medicine, although there is evidence that sweet-smelling flowers were sometimes carried to counter the terrible odors of rotting corpses in areas affected by disease. (People were so terrified of catching the plague, in fact, that they are known to have resorted to extreme measures - burning all their clothes, possessions and sometimes even their houses in the hope of avoiding infection.) And finally, there is no reference anywhere to sneezing as a final and fatal symptom of the plague.

One of the strongest arguments given for the rhyme being connected with the plague is, in fact as far as I can see, one of the strongest arguments against it. Several historians have urged in favor of the association. But the big question is this: if indeed the rhyme dates as far back as the Black Death in the 1340s, then why did nobody write it down for over five hundred years?

No contemporary record of the rhyme has been found from that period. Even Samuel Pepys (1633-1703), the noted diarist and chronicler of a later outbreak, the Great Plague, makes no mention of it, although it seems unlikely that no record should be made until 1881, centuries after it was - seemingly - first sung. In fact, no connection had been made between ‘Ring-a-Ring o' Roses' and either of the plagues by anybody until 1961, when James Leasor proposed the idea in his book The Plague and the Fire.

In conclusion, while the connection between rhyme and plague makes a good story, it appears far more likely that ‘Ring-a-Ring o' Roses' is a simple children's party game, illustrating nothing more than a group holding hands in a circle and dancing around, to the accompaniment of satisfying sounds effects (A-tishoo! A-tishoo!) and actions (We all fall down). In its first publication in Britain, in 1881 - in Kate Greenaway's Mother Goose - the sneezing wasn't even part of the rhyme, perhaps suggesting a later addition.

The version in Alice Gomme's Dictionary of British Folklore (1898) reads:

Ring a ring of roses,
A pocket full of posies;
Upstairs, downstairs,
In my lady's chamber.

While, as late as 1949, a version included in a collection of verse entitled Poems of Early Childhood - illustrated with four happy children dancing in a circle and carrying bunches of roses - still carries no reference to the fatal sneezing:

Ring a ring a rosy,
A pocket full of posies;
One, two, three, four,
We all fall down.

For me, that long held myth is now busted. So let's move on to our final rhyme. Yes, that's your lot I am afraid, for anymore you will have to go out and buy Pop Goes the Weasel.

Little Miss Muffet

Little Miss Muffet
Sat on a tuffet
Eating her curds and whey.
Along came a spider
That sat down beside her
And frightened Miss Muffet away.

Arachnopohobia is clearly not a modern complaint. Although cobwebs have traditionally been used as a dressing for wounds (and, scientifically tested, have turned out to contain all kinds of antibiotics), spiders have long been seen as malevolent. Richard III, presented by William Shakespeare as the most evil English king, is described as "a bottled spider," which comes from the belief that spiders were inherently toxic - if one were dropped into a glass of water, every drop would be poisoned. It is therefore entirely understandable that this particular little girl from days gone by would have been frightened away by one, but in fact there's more to the origins of this rhyme ...

"Little Miss Muffet" first appeared in print in Scotland in 1805, but it was probably around for a long time before that. Some Scottish historians believe Miss Muffet to be Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-87), and the spider John Knox (c.1510-72), the great Protestant reformer and founder of the powerful Presbyterian Church in Scotland. Knox's best-known work was The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (1558) - a notorious attack against the female Roman Catholic sovereigns of the day, in particular Mary I of Scotland and Mary I of England, in which he stated that his purpose was to demonstrate "how abominable before God is the Empire or Rule of a wicked woman, yea, of a traiteresse and bastard." Which goes some way to explaining why he and the young queen were unlikely to see eye to eye, even if she hadn't had such a turbulent and very public lovelife - twice married, to the French Dauphin (Francis II) and Lord Darnley, both Catholics, and with a purported lover, David Rizzio, murdered by a jealous Darnley. Knox held vast religious influence in Scotland and regularly rebuked Mary, often openly attacking her in his sermons. Eventually her nobles rebelled and she ran away to England, but her cousin Elizabeth turned out to be even less keen on her presences than Knox. Mary was kept under house arrest for nineteen years and then executed. So the Scottish line is that only if Miss Muffet had made friends with the spider, everything could have been so different for her.

However, an English interpretation of the rhyme is rather more domestic in nature. Historians point to the eminent English physician Dr. Thomas Muffet (1553-1604), staunchly Puritan in his beliefs and therefore close in spirit to John Knox. What he is best known for is his study of insects, particularly spiders, and how they relate to medicine. Hence it is easy to imagine one of Dr. Muffet's daughters sitting on a small, three-legged stool (a tuffet), eating her curds and whey (a dairy product, not unlike cottage cheese), when one of his spiders dropped in and frightened the living curds out of her.

 

As a writer, I am often asked how I deal with the pressure, of publicity and deadlines, but I don't feel any at all. Pressure is being a single mother with two kids, a stroller, bags full of shopping and finding out the elevator is broken and your front door is now 15 minutes away, up the stairs. What writers, singers, musicians and artists do is just the entertainment. What teachers, nurses, fireman, bus drivers and others with important jobs do when they get home after a hard day is put on a CD, turn on the TV or open a book and say, "right, now entertain me, I've had a hard day." I imagine a world without books, for me especially, would be awful. But can you imagine a world without Policemen or Dentists or the Fire Department. Those are the proper jobs.

Although, even realizing that, the pressure of the first few live television appearances can take its toll. If you are lucky enough for your first book to land you on the news, then take my word for it, you won't be expecting that and you will be nervous. Or, in my case you will say, "No fear, you must be bloody joking."

So the PR people spent time gently explaining how this sort of thing can really break the book, change my life, improve everything and words like "wonderful opportunity" were used, so was, "the publisher will be very cross if you don't." "Well tell him to do it then," I seem to remember replying. And then a close friend of mine took me out that night, and he has been involved with managing very successful rock bands over the years so I respect his views on publicity and the like, and he explained how this was a once in a lifetime opportunity which will undoubtedly lead to many many more. "You are standing on the edge and I am going to make sure you go the right way," he explained to me, better than the PR people did, that BBC Breakfast want it to go well, they were not about to drop me in it, try to catch me out or make me look a fool. There will be a proper brief, you will know the questions in advance. Will I? - it's not like that on the radio. Don't worry he said, you tell them which phrases you want to explain, and they will "randomly ask you." They will carry you.  That made me feel better. "And anyway," he continued, "the other reason you should do it is because if you don't, you will give me a chance to take the piss out of you for the rest of your life.... "... Well I had no choice, did I?   All you need to do is come up with a generic answer and use that if they ask you something you don't know, so I did.

If I was asked a phrase I didn't know - I was going to say... "Now this is a good question, because the hardest part of writing the book was coming up with the phrase in the first place," then go off to research.

The whole thing is over in a flash and your mother is on the phone still choking on her cornflakes because you didn't tell her you were going to be on TV and just about everyone you know is sending text messages. Then comes the best bit of all. That week Red Herrings went from selling 11,000 copies in the UK to 25,000 copies, went in at number 7 on the bestseller list and has stayed there for the next sixteen months, becoming the second biggest selling non fiction book in the UK for 2005. And I wasn't going to do it. What an idiot...!! It was the moment that began this 5 year journey leading me to the privilege of writing for you, in America, today.

I hope you have enjoyed yourself as much as I have this week and that we have the opportunity to meet again one day.

Albert Jack

Guildford

October 2^nd 2009

 

Albert Jack, Pop Goes the Weasel, nursey rhymes, secret meanings