{"id":3999,"date":"2012-03-18T10:31:43","date_gmt":"2012-03-18T16:31:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3999"},"modified":"2012-03-18T17:24:49","modified_gmt":"2012-03-18T23:24:49","slug":"ring-dancing-monkeys-and-black-death-rubbish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3999","title":{"rendered":"Ring-Dancing Monkeys and Black Death Rubbish"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At <em>Got Medieval<\/em>, Carl Pyrdrum re-debunks the persistent, authentic-<em>sounding<\/em> story that the nursery rhyme &#8220;Ring around the Rosies&#8221; has anything whatsoever to do with the Black Death of the 1340s.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gotmedieval.com\/2012\/02\/ring-a-ring-orubbish-and-also-reader-mail-mmm-marginalia-107.html#more-2555\">It does not.<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>As any good English plague survivor<sup><a id=\"identifier_9_2555\" title=\"The idea that the plague was caused by Jews, a conjunction of planets, or \u201cbad air\u201d was really more a continental phenomenon.\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gotmedieval.com\/2012\/02\/ring-a-ring-orubbish-and-also-reader-mail-mmm-marginalia-107.html#footnote_9_2555\">**********<\/a><\/sup> could tell you, the plague was caused by sin and best warded off by extreme piety and making sure your humours were in balance.<sup><a id=\"identifier_10_2555\" title=\"And if you did get sick, best to get someone to bleed, sweat, or purge you, depending on which of your humours were out of balance, and if that failed, you could always use a pigeon feather to prick the swelling and drain its venom by applying pigeon dung.\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gotmedieval.com\/2012\/02\/ring-a-ring-orubbish-and-also-reader-mail-mmm-marginalia-107.html#footnote_10_2555\">***********<\/a><\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gotmedieval.com\/2012\/02\/ring-a-ring-orubbish-and-also-reader-mail-mmm-marginalia-107.html#more-2555\">His version includes dancing monkeys, a feral cat, and Lancelot.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Here on the banks of Hardscrabble Creek, which is starting to rise as the snows are melting, we are fairly suspicious of authentic-sounding stories about surviving medieval practices. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wildhunt\/2012\/03\/saint-patrick-druids-snakes-and-popular-myths.html\">See also St. Patrick and the &#8220;snakes&#8221; who were not Druids.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At Got Medieval, Carl Pyrdrum re-debunks the persistent, authentic-sounding story that the nursery rhyme &#8220;Ring around the Rosies&#8221; has anything whatsoever to do with the Black Death of the 1340s. It does not. As any good English plague survivor********** could tell you, the plague was caused by sin and best warded off by extreme piety [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[85,21,100,50,173],"class_list":["post-3999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-druids","tag-england","tag-history","tag-ireland","tag-medicine"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-12v","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6623,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6623","url_meta":{"origin":3999,"position":0},"title":"No, &#8220;Ring around the Rosie&#8221; is not about the Black Death","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 24, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"For one thing, there are multiple versions recorded by folklorists and they do not \"all fall down.\" From the Library of Congress blog: The claim that the rhyme is related to pestilence is even younger; the folklorists who diligently recorded the rhyme itself in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"folklore\"","block_context":{"text":"folklore","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=folklore"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":340,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=340","url_meta":{"origin":3999,"position":1},"title":"It's all about birds Things\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 26, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"It's all about birds Things found while Web-surfing. Snopes.com debunks the story that the song \"The Twelve Days of Christmas\" contains hidden references to Christian doctrine, adding that the \"five golden rings\" are ring-necked pheasants. If true, that would establish an earliest date for the song: when were those birds\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10304,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10304","url_meta":{"origin":3999,"position":2},"title":"Baltic Gothic: A Quick Review of &#8220;November&#8221;","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 20, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"In rural 19th-century Estonia, as depicted in the film November, people did not merely put out food offerings for the Dead on All Souls Day \u2014 they fed them. And talked to them. And if the Dead wished to enjoy a sauna, a fire had already been lit. And then\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"death\"","block_context":{"text":"death","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=death"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1668,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1668","url_meta":{"origin":3999,"position":3},"title":"Video Gaming and Lucid Dreaming","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 5, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Some researchers think that playing video games may help dreamers to have and control lucid dreams more ably. The first study suggested that people who frequently played video games were more likely to report lucid dreams, observer dreams where they viewed themselves from outside their bodies, and dream control that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"dreams\"","block_context":{"text":"dreams","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=dreams"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11105,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11105","url_meta":{"origin":3999,"position":4},"title":"Fimbul Winter and the Plague: The Horrible Mid-6th Century","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 27, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"The mid-6th century must have been a terrible time in the Mediterranean world, in Western Europe, and probably other places as well. If you look up \"the plague of Justinian,\" you will find that much has been written on a bubonic plague outbreak during the rule of the Eastern Roman\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"Raids on Britain following end of Roman rule","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thegreatcoursesdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/End.of_.Roman_.rule_.in_.Britain.383.410-241x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3038,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3038","url_meta":{"origin":3999,"position":5},"title":"Violent Gladiators Plague Rome","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 11, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Sounds like \"news you can use from the 3rd century CE,\" doesn't it. Actually, it is today's news.","rel":"","context":"In \"Rome\"","block_context":{"text":"Rome","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=rome"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3999"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4004,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3999\/revisions\/4004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}