Ring around the rosey,......Typical description of a buboe.
a pocket full of poseys,....Nosegays of flowers were carried
ashes, ashes,...............to cover the smell of death.
we all fall down............The bodies were burned, all die.
I just love nursery rhymes, don’t you?
They also hoped that the ashes help purify the air by removing the disease's contamination.
Same with the flowers...they hoped that the scent would, somehow, help purify the air.
The nose cone on the doctors' funny suits...
...would be filled with flowers to this end.
The black rats carried the fleas which carried the disease; but a more advanced form--pneumonic--did travel in the sputum of the ill.