Ring Around Rosie

Ring Around the Rosie is a children's singing game where players join hands in a circle, dance around, and fall down at the song's end on "we all fall down." The game has many variant names and lyrics across English-speaking countries.

A popular folk etymology claims the rhyme describes the bubonic plague—the "rosie" being a rash, "posies" being protective herbs, and the falling down representing death—but this interpretation has no historical support and emerged only in the mid-twentieth century.