No. 62 Ring Around the Rosie
This little round, universally familiar in America, meets us again in Germany and Provence. After the transit of various languages, and thousands of miles, the song retains the same essential characteristics.
Ring a ring a rosie,
A bottle full of posie,
All the girls in our town,
Ring for little Josie.
New Bedford, Mass. (about 1790).
Another version:
Round the ring of roses,
Pots full of posies,
The one who stoops last
Shall tell whom she loves best.
At the end of the words the children suddenly stoop, and the last to get down undergoes some penalty, or has to take the place of the child in the centre, who represents the “rosie” (rose-tree; French, rosier).
Vulgarized forms of the round are common:
Ring around the rosie,
Squat among the posies.
Ring around the roses,
Pocket full of posies,
One, two, three—squat!
And finally it is deformed past recognition:
A ring, a ring, a ransy,
Buttermilk and tansy,
Flower here and flower there,
And all—squat!
This last corruption was in use some forty years since in Connecticut.