Hi all--
>I have been browsing the archives and discovered a 1997 discussion on
>popular myths about the Middle Ages and how we can debunk them. This
>brought to mind a number of my own bete-noires which keep turning up in
>student papers, and I decided to make a page on my teaching site which
would
>at least refer to and refute such myths.
My pet myth is that "Ring-around-the-Rosey" is about the plague--or more
accurately, was handed down from the time of either the Black Death or the
Great Plague. The definitive debunk site is
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~imunro/ring.html As some here may know, I've
got an informal study of the spread of this rhyme going, and I'm trying to
trace when the plague explanation first appeared. My earliest date is the
1940s, and I'm pretty sure the explanation probably came from England, where
kids are more likely to learn about the Plague as part of their education
about English history.
"Pope Joan" is another favorite. I debunked it on alt.folklore.urban, and my
message can be found at
http://www.urbanlegends.com/religion/pope_joan_con_more.html
Ian Munro, whose "Rosie" work I just cited, also provided a debunk, and
referenced the Catholic Encyclopedia (the online one--the New Catholic
Encyclopedia, I'm betting, does an even beter job):
http://www.knight.org/advent/cathen/08407a.htm
Susan Carroll-Clark
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