What does the nursery rhyme 'Ring - Around - the - Rosie' actually refer to?

The nursery rhyme 'Ring - Around - the - Rosie' is one that referred to the 'Black Death'. The invariable sneezing and falling down in modern English versions have given historians and others the opportunity to say that the rhyme dates back to the Great Plague. In the past and still today, kids have happily joined hands with one another to recite the familiar nursery rhyme, “Ring - Around - the - Rosie, a pocket full of posies. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.” Not many people actually realized to what this seemingly happy little nursery rhyme came to refer, correctly or incorrectly.

This nursery rhyme began about 1347 and derives from the not-so-delightful Black Plague, which killed over twenty-five million people in the fourteenth century. The “ring around a rosie” refers to the round, red rosy rash that is the first alleged symptom of the disease. The practice of carrying flowers (posies of herbs) and placing them around the infected person for protection to ward off the smell of the disease is described in the phrase, “a pocket full of posies.” “Ashes” is a corruption or imitation of the sneezing sounds made by the infected person. Finally, “we all fall down” describes the many dead resulting from the disease.

This explanation presented above is now considered apocryphal. This is the conclusion that almost all interested people reach after they review history and all necessary facts.