Blog 2931 – 11.08.2023
Ring Around The Rosie, Patty Cake, Skip To My Lou
It is another three song day. The legends associated with Ring Around The Rosie usually speak to the tragedies of the black plague or smallpox outbreaks that attacked Europe over almost seven centuries. But since the first publishing of the nursery rhyme was in 1881 the meaning and origin stories are most likely apocryphal (made up).
It is a very human trait to invent explanations for things that we have little if any actual evidence to support. I have heard it said that religion is to a large degree “trying to make sense out of things that just do not make much sense.” We find a lot of comfort in simple explanations that have a ring of truth or at least plausibility to them.
Children do not sing these songs for their deeper underlying meanings nor for their origin stories, but because they are fun to play and to dance to. I am reminded of the way nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixties teenagers rated new songs on Dick Clark’s The American Bandstand, a popular after school TV program of that period. They would say things like: “I give it a seventy-eight because it is easy to dance to.”
Well kids all three songs today independent of their meaning or backstory are easy to dance to. And in the words of a more modern tune: “If you get the chance to sit it out or dance, I hope you dance.”
Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IrQaZTCnIMF-1CE7iyXrqBo552pVn0Ti/view?usp=drivesdk
Ring Around The Rosie, Patty Cake, Skip Toby My Lou
Lee Ann Womack – I Hope You Dance (Official Music Video)
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