| Author | Message | ||
     Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 212.219.63.204 |
Heard "Ring a Ring of Roses" being played at the kiddie's pool at Hatfield swimming centre today. It as a sickly sweet version, but somehow incredibly sinister. There must have been a slightly discordant minor key in there somehow because the tinkling of electric piano and soft female voice delivered an awful, probabaly unintended malevolence, somehow the real meaning of the song was coming through... Regards Terry | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
As "Ring around the rosy" (as I've always heard it here, in the States) supposedly refers back to the Black Death, we need to have new children's rhyme-songs, for contemporary woes. You know, like ADD, or highway traffic, one's cell phone not getting proper reception.... | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.56 |
Except that according to QI the rhyme predates the black death by several decades... and the fact that it's based on the black death is an urban myth - apart from anything else, sneezing was not a symptom. Possibly it's based on an influenza outbreak instead... | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 212.219.63.204 |
I didn't know that Mr Weber, interesting. I always believed it to be plague-related. The flu theory makes sense. Perhaps it was an epidemic of cocaine use! It was just the odd dissonance between the sugar sweet delivery of the song and the odd menace that was coming through. Difficult to describe. Like one of those ghost flms where they use children singing in the background somewhere... Even more menacing than Tom Waites' version of "Hey ho hey ho it's off to work we go" Cheers Terry | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
It was just the odd dissonance between the sugar sweet delivery of the song and the odd menace that was coming through. You mean like this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVdCFtKcSJM  | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.211.16 |
My understanding is that whatever the song's origins may have been, the version we know derives from the 17th century and refers first to the Great Plague (1665) and then to the Great Fire of London (1666): Ring-a-ring-a-roses A pocket full of posies A-tissue, a-tissue We all fall down Ashes in the water Ashes in the sea We all jump up With a one, two, three The 'ring of roses' refers to the circular red markings typical of bubonic plague, and the 'pocket of posies' to the flowers people carried to freshen the air around them. 'Ashes in the water' refers to the Thames. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.56 |
I'd need to watch the episode of QI again for details... | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 220.138.163.126 |
Bear in mind while watching QI that they've made more than a few big mistakes in the past when presenting 'facts', Weber! | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.180.122.49 |
They made one the other week when Stephen Fry described how satnav devices broadcast to their satellites. Nooooo - they don't broadcast anything, they just 'tune in' to the satellites' broadcasts. Tut-tut, Stephen. |