[RnMomof7]

Actually I believe that the doctors sprinkled rose petals on the sick victims to 'cure them

The nursery rhyme "Ring Around the Rosey" is a rhyme about the plague.
Infected people with the plague would get red circular sores ("Ring
around the rosey"), these sores would smell very badly so common folks
would put flowers on their bodies somewhere (inconspicuously), so that
it would cover the smell of the sores ("a pocket full of posies").
Furthermore, people who died from the plague would be burned so as to
reduce the possible spread of the disease ("ashes, ashes, we all fall
down").



 

[Persuasion]

My question is, why were they teaching kids such sick nursery rhymes!?

[exnavy]

Wow, I never realized that is where that rhyme originated. I don't think I'll ever look at nursery rhymes quite the same again.

I'm betting that the senators from that state have something to do with these cases of plague.

[AnAmericanMother]

Actually, scholarly investigation has shown that the stories about "Ring Around the Rosey" being connected to the plague are without foundation (other than coincidence and speculation).

William Baring-Gould's Annotated Mother Goose used the Oxford English Dictionary's method of searching for the first known publication or provenance of the traditional nursery rhymes. The first known publication of this rhyme is in Kate Greenaway's 1881 Mother Goose. It does not appear in Gammer Gurton's Garland (1784), Mother Goose's Melody (1760), Nurse Truelove (1755), or Tommy Thumb's Song Book (ca. 1744), all fairly extensive collections of traditional nursery rhymes both innocuous and scary.

So it's fun to speculate, but there's no historical foundation for this little bit of legend.