The Folk Tradition - Ring A Ring O' Roses

For this exercise I decided to use the nursery rhyme Ring a Ring o' Roses, as although I know all of the suggested songs well, I particularly remember Ring o' Roses as being very prominent in my childhood. My earliest memory of this song would probably have been at nursery or early infants school. We would have used it much the same as it always has been; as a singing and dancing exercise. It is a very short and simple tune so is very easy for children to pick up. I would have been taught it by my earliest school teachers, but I've not yet had the opportunity to pass it on to anyone else! Because of the 'group' nature of the song and its related dance, I think the nursery/school environment is probably where most children have learnt it in modern times. Perhaps in the days of greater community integration and before TV, families or groups of villagers would play it together.

In the days before modern technology, and when lots more jobs were labour orientated, singing was used as a way to stimulate the mind (the same way workers may now play the radio). It was also used to keep pace and rhythm for repetitive tasks, and synchronized pushes and pulls during manual labour. Recording technology wasn't yet available, so the people worked together to provide their own entertainment. Singing songs with meaningful lyrics was also a way of teaching others about culture and history.

I am finding it difficult to think of songs from recent times that would be the folk songs of the future. I think this is because society has changed dramatically from when folk songs were first conceived. Music and music-making used to be the primary source of entertainment, but now there are many other competing sources, such as TV, games consoles, the internet and social media etc. I think today's world is too fragmented and diverse for a 'folk' type song to take root and become universally known and loved.

With that being said, the rise of social media has, in a way, brought us back full circle to a situation where huge communities share knowledge and media. There have been some well-known examples of obscure videos or images going 'viral' on the internet resulting in a situation where most people in the street would have at least heard of it. A good recent example would be Gangnam Style by South Korean musician Psy. By the end of 2012, this song had reached over one billion views on YouTube, which demonstrates the collective power of social media to bring a song to a huge audience. Social media is the perfect recipe for the creation and preservation of folk songs, but I fear that tastes and trends change too rapidly in today's world; for as popular as Gangnam Style proved, I can't imagine it being sung in classrooms in 200 years time... but who knows...?

Coming back to Ring a Ring o' Roses, it is a very short song which is often repeated several times. There have been many adaptions to the lyrics over the years, the earliest in print was in 1881:

Ring-a-ring-a-roses,

A pocket full of posies;

Ashes! Ashes!

We all fall down.

The version I learnt though, and the one commonly known in Britain, goes:

Ring-a-ring o' roses,

A pocket full of posies,

A-tishoo! A-tishoo!

We all fall down.

There are reportedly earlier versions than the one printed in 1881, and the lyrics also differ in the American version. There is even a different German rhyme printed in 1796 that's first stanza closely resembles the lyrics from Ring a Ring o' Roses.

Ring a Ring o' Roses has only one stanza of four lines, the number of syllables being 6,7,6,4. The 'sing-song' melody in the first line is repeated in the second line, with the third line comprised of a repeated three-note melody. The melody in the last line is a descending scale, matching the meaning of the words.

The lyrics don't mention any nationality or national traits, and its origin is unknown. It is a popular myth that the song is based on the black plague; this theory has been thoroughly debunked.