There have been articles dissecting the history or false history of school yard rhymes. It seems no one can agree on what ring around the rosie means or where it came from. But there is still something strange and haunting about some of them.

Skipping Games, those jump rope games accompanied by rhymes, are explored by Julia Bishop on the British Library web site. There are some vintage video studies of these skipping games. Though I’m sure children in the USA were skipping to different rhymes at the time, it is both nostalgic and fascinated to read about the history of something we knew well, but left behind us long ago.