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Ring-a-ring of roses is a nursery rhyme. There are many variations; these two are perhaps the most well-known:
- A ring-a-ring of roses
- A pocket full of posies
- A tishoo, a tishoo
- We all fall down
- Ring around the rosies
- Pocket full of posies
- Ashes, ashes
- We all fall down
The rhyme is associated with a children's game in which the participants dance in a ring singing the rhyme and fall down at the end of the verse.
It is sometimes claimed that the rhyme commemorates the Great Plague of London in 1665, or perhaps earlier outbreaks of bubonic plague in England. According to this theory, the ring of roses was the characteristic formation of buboes in the early stage of infections. The posies were flowers thought to ward off infection. The third line refers to sneezing, another early symptom. The last line refers to dying. However, this theory is nothing more than speculation: the rhyme was first published in Kate Greenaway's Mother Goose or The Old Nursery Rhymes (1881) and there is no evidence of an earlier origin.
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