Greetings--
>I've believed the plague theory (or something to do with a later plague)
ever
>since. This is how it was explained to me: 1-The first line refers to the
>hearald spot, like ring-worm, which is the first thing (a ring around a red
>spot) to appear on the victim. 2-Posies were thought to ward off the
plague.
>3-The third line refered to the burning of the victim's bodies and 4-The
fourth
>was the end of it all, catastrophe or death or whatever. It sounded very
>convincing. What does it really mean?
That's the standard explanation. We've seen evidence here on this list that
the plague explanation was circulating as early as the 40's. Folklorists
have not been able to prove, however, that the version which eventually
became best known (the familiar one, with either "ashes" or "atishoo" in the
third line) was believed in the late 1800's to be about the plague, probably
because it was only one of several variants.
It's also clear that in the late 20th century, it is widely believed that
this rhyme is about the Plague, so in our minds, it *is* about the Plague.
The controversy, of course, appears when we try to claim that, for instance,
Kate Greenaway (who is credited with its first appearance in print) believed
it to be about the Plague; or that the rhyme is a survival from either the
days of the Black Death or from the Great Plague of 1665.
To my knowledge, no folklorist has ever argued that the rhyme is
definitively Plague-derived. It's historians like me who keep passing it
on, often because it sounds so right--although the symptoms are not typical
of the Plague. (Buboes are not "red marks", and sneezing is only seen in
the pneumatic variety, which from what I've read was less common, although
more deadly.)
Susan Carroll-Clark
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