rain...

It's raining, it's pouring

The Old Man is snoring

He went to bed

bumped his head

and couldn't get up in the morning

Rain, rain, go away

Come again another day

Little Johnny wants to play

 

I just don't know the origin of this silly verse my mother taught me, but it came to mind with the rain this morning.

I do know the origin of "Ring around the rosies."  It was explained to a crowd of tourists on a London tour bus.  I'd never thought about it before.

Ring around the rosies (lesions of disease)

A pocketful of posies (herbs for medicine)

Ashes, ashes (the bodies have to be burnt, or alternately, this is sneezing, which was another symptom of the plague)

We all fall down (the plague is killing everyone, regardless of station)

What's amazing is we are talking about a rhyme from 1347-50.

What other popular folklore has been so long-lived?  And this survived as a children's rhyme?

Five or six-hundred years is a long-time.  The Guttenberg Bible came along about 100 years later.

Wanna see pages of the Guttenberg? http://www.csfneb.org/omaha/links.htm

One link says that it has seven more books than the current Bible.  Hmmm.  One suspects someone threw out the baby with the bath water....