Lol, we pretty much sang a song about death and the plague. What a morbid childhood song to sing! :-S

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Ugh, why doesn't anybody do their research?! http://www.snopes.com/language/literary/rosie.asp

by Anonymous 13 years ago

(Your+name+(optional)): I did do my research and there is alot of evidence pointing towards the fact that it was about the plague. I'm not gonna put my trust in a site called snopes....no offence

by Anonymous 13 years ago

I'd be interested in hearing about your evidence. I trust of course that it comes from well-accredited sources? As for not trusting a site based on its name... congratulations on your utterly shallow approach. I suppose you didn't happen to take any time to notice the complete list of sources that the site provides to validate the information it provides?

by Anonymous 13 years ago

(Your+name+(optional)): And just because it was first written down in the late 1800's doesn't mean it had to of gone 500 years by word of mouth. People write songs about past events all the time. It could have been written originally in 1881 about the plague, not in the 1600's when the plague was actually happening

by Anonymous 13 years ago

It suppose it is possible but it remains unlikely. Why would anyone choose to write a nursery rhyme about such a morbid subject when they themselves had no experience with it? Even if they had, that meaning would quickly have been lost seeing as children from the late 1800s would have had hardly any knowledge about the plague and would have failed to understand any innuendo regarding it. Thus, it would have been transmitted as a poem free of any plague related meaning, and when it comes to folkloric forms of literature like nursery rhymes it's the transmitted form that matters as opposed to the original author's intent. Nursery rhymes are influenced and developed based on the contemporary cultural climate and the Black Death certainly was not a big factor in the social atmosphere of the 19th century. The other theory (regarding play parties) that has been put forward is far more credible since it integrates the religious ban on dancing that existed at the time.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

(Your+name+(optional)): Why would someone make a nursery rhyme about a baby falling out of a tree?

by Anonymous 13 years ago

How about the rhyme Mary Mary Quite Contrary. It's about a woman who bury's her children in her garden.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

How does that one go?

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Wow I didn't know it meant that, that's pretty weird

by Anonymous 13 years ago

We were talking about this in soccer today!! MLIA!

by Anonymous 13 years ago

...don't do that.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Mary, Mary, quite contrary. How does your garden grow? And then it lists several flowers which I can never remember. I believe there are 3. one for each of Her children she buried. Then there is the nursery rhyme that goes- It's raining it's pouring the old man is snoring. He bumped his head and went to bed. And didn't wake up in the morning. . . That's why they tell you not to sleep for a while if you have a concussion. If you read the original fairy tales they are nothing like the sweet ones we have heard as children. Cinderella kills her stepsisters. The evil step mother usually wins. Someone always dies.

by Anonymous 13 years ago