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ESSAY
The Hidden Sounds of Plague
A devastating disease from centuries past is coded into children’s rhymes & ballads
Among the things that the British brought to their colonies were nursery rhymes. Thus, in India and Malawi and Antigua, one could see the odd spectacle of children singing ‘Rain, rain, go away! Come again another day.” Now, in England it rains all the time and so one can understand the children wishing the rain away. But children in scorching tropical climes? They should be begging for rain, voices raised in pleas, not driving it away.
As incongruous as this are nursery rhymes which children sing with blithe spirits, not knowing that the rhymes have dark meanings which, over the years, have become sugar-coated. Here’s one such rhyme:
Ring a ring o’ roses,
Pocketful of posies,
Ashes! Ashes!
All fall down!
This rhyme (the first line could also be “Ring a round of roses”) is sung with the children holding hands and forming a ring, moving in a circle as they belted out the words. At the last sentence, each child let go their neighbor’s hands and they simultaneously fell on the ground, shrieking with laughter. What fun, what mirth, what enjoyment in this simple pastime.
