The Black Plague Batted .500 Its Rookie Year

ElDuderino44137 writes "Hey, kids, got the summer blues? The CIA isn't the only one with a kids' page to keep you busy. The Centers for Disease Control have the full set of collectible infectious disease trading cards. Mix 'em, match 'em, trade 'em, recoil in abject horror from 'em."

That snopes article sucks.

[CoolGuySteve]

Usually Snopes articles are really good but that one's pretty weak.

Up until the end where a folklorist is quoted, it's extremely speculative, basing almost all its evidence on the fact that the rhyme didn't appear in print until the 1880s. Arguing over the year claimed by an urban legend (or at least the version that they chose to knock down) is pretty pedantic and poorly thought out in this case.

For example, it's much easier to make light of a plague that happened 2 centuries earlier, just as many of the posters here have done. It's also quite possible that nobody had written the rhyme down before 1881 despite its existance, contrary to snopes' arbitrary claims.

The Grimm brothers didn't publish their collection until the early 1800s even though many of the tales had existed long before that. The Hunt translation (the most popular english translation around that era) didn't come until the mid to late 19th century. It seems folk tales and nursery rhymes were in vogue at the time.

The red herring is that snopes exagerates the time span by referring to the 14th century plague rather than the more recent 17th century one. It would take a lot of drama out of their argument if they couldn't write about "five centuries" and "six centuries".

They also dismiss the issue based on a lot of superficial differences. For example:

The word "ashes" cannot be "a corruption of the sneezing sounds made by the infected person" and a word used for its literal meaning. Either "ashes" was a corruption of an earlier form or a deliberate use; it can't be both.

Fuck off. Why not? The verse "Catch a tiger by the toe" has a disturbingly more racist variation. The use of the word "tiger" is both a linguistic corruption of an earlier form and a deliberate use.

Moreover, the "ashes" ending of "Ring Around the Rosie" appears to be a fairly modern addition to the rhyme; earlier versions repeat other words or syllables instead (e.g., "Hush!", "A-tischa!", "Hasher", "Husher", "Hatch-u", "A-tishoo") or, as noted above, have completely different endings.

Wow, a few of those sound a lot like sneezing to me. Snopes is also ignoring the regional differences that this probably comes from. I drink pop and use kleenex while others drink soda and use tissues. Before TV and radio, these differences were more prevalent and evolved over time. And for the love of Pete, it's not like we ever obscure morbid concepts in language. That practice passed away a while back.

As for the folklorist, he explains the ring game and how the rhyme fits. That's not enough to claim the rhyme has no other meaning, he just describes its purpose.

The article doesn't present any concrete evidence to show why the plague interpretation is not a valid one, just that the verses are more recent than the 1300s. Considering the line "The nursery rhyme 'Ring Around the Rosie' is a coded reference to the Black Plague." is marked with a big red "False", they sure do a shitty job of addressing the issue.

IMO, treating this snopes article as a solid fact is worse than doing so with the original presumption. It's annoying that they can get away with making such loose arguments just because they wear the magic skeptic hat.