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You probably remember singing them in a circle, bouncing on someone’s knee, or chanting them in a schoolyard without a second thought. Nursery rhymes are woven so deeply into childhood that they feel almost as natural as breathing. Sweet, harmless, cheerful – that’s what we assume.
Here’s the thing though: many of those innocent little songs are hiding some genuinely dark, surprising, and at times, jaw-dropping secrets. Beneath their cheerful rhythms and playful rhymes lie grim tales of death, disease, violence, and religious strife. Wrapped in innocence, they carry echoes of a far darker past. Let’s dive in.
Ring Around the Rosie: Plague Story or Just a Dance?
Honestly, this is the nursery rhyme that started the whole conversation. Most people grew up being told it was about the Black Death – the bubonic plague that devastated Europe. In the mid-20th century, it was suggested that the song reflects the Great Plague or earlier outbreaks of bubonic plague in England, with the plague’s rash, protective posies of herbs, symptoms of sneezing, and finally falling down dead.
Sounds convincing, right? Here’s the twist. The Library of Congress notes that the first mention of “Ring Around the Rosie” and the plague comes in the middle of the 20th century, 700 years after the bubonic plague. That gap alone should raise eyebrows. The symptoms do not align closely with the song; the…
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Author : Matthias Binder
Publish date : 2026-02-25 12:52:00
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