"Is 'Ring Around the Rosie' About the Plague?" A Look at Children's Songs.
Folklife Today Podcast
English - July 29, 2019 14:00 - 36 minutes - 66.9 MB - ★★★★★ - 18 ratingsBooks Arts library of congress loc folklife today american folklife center folklife cultural traditions oral history music songs storytelling Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
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Hosts John Fenn and Stephen Winick discuss children's songs, and in particular "Ring Around the Rosie." They interview Carolyn Bennett, the Library of Congress Teacher-in-Residence, and play versions of children's songs recorded in the field in 1939 and in 2019. They talk about the story that the origin of "Ring Around the Rosie" is related to plague symptoms in English history. They conclude that the plague story is folklore, and that specifically it is "metafolklore," meaning folklore about folklore. They also conclude that it's probably not true. Nevertheless it tells us interesting things about the way folklore is told, spread, and used by various kinds of people, including children.