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marguerite

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Ooooh... "Real English" ... I see. Now I have the song stuck in my head, being sung with an English accent. hahaha!

 

lol! Yup, what traumatized children we all really are, singing about dying people and all that. I'm surprized we all don't have a fear of falling from heights from "Rock-a-bye baby".

 

Are poppies the same as posies? If so, they're a very ominous flower....

 

Humming.....

- J

Sorry about that! No, the pocketful of posy was supposed to be a bunch of some kind of flower (not poppies) that would ward off the plague, like garlic and Dracula. Were they stinky flowers that kept other people at bay? Not sure. (That's supposed to be the real benefit of chewing raw garlic to prevent colds.) I guess when there's no medical care to speak of and folks around you are dropping like flies, you grab at whatever wacky idea comes along.

 

It's all Genghis Khan's fault, you know. By conquering everyone in sight he mixed up the germ pool and imported the plague from Tibet to Mongolia, then spread it all the way through Eurasia. Some people think that's why his empire disintegrated so quickly (his descendants got the plague), although the fact that no two of them could occupy the same space without trying to kill each other probably had something to do with it.

 

If you want a little relaxation during your attempted B&E, look for Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt: it follows a bunch of reincarnating characters through an alternative history in which Europe, wiped out by the Black Death, ceases to be a factor and the world is divided between Islam and China.

A fount of useless information,

M

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Hm..... I think you should correct these guys Lady M, or at least throw overmuffins at them: http://www.snopes.com/language/literary/rosie.asp

 

HA! I always knew he was a flea-bitten meanie :blink:

 

 

That book sounds interesting. I will have to keep it in mind.

 

An expert at killing fleas

- Jools

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Hm..... I think you should correct these guys Lady M, or at least throw overmuffins at them: http://www.snopes.com/language/literary/rosie.asp

An expert at killing fleas

- Jools

Goodness, so much fuss about one little nursery rhyme. I don't think I'd dare tackle such a fervent defender! :blink:

 

Since it's probably true that the rhyme was first recorded in the 19th century, it's impossible to say when it first appeared (this is generally true of folk/fairy tales, songs, and the like). After that, the argument goes awry: impossible means impossible. The rhyme could have been around for centuries in which people thought children's games not worth recording; it could have been invented by the person who first "recorded" it; or anything in between. But so far as I know, no one has linked any other nursery rhyme to the Black Death, so the answer to your question remains the same.

 

The bit about Genghis is a hypothesis, too, but it rests on firmer ground, if only because his troops reportedly catapulted plague-ridden corpses into Herat, a town in Central Asia, to break the inhabitants' will and force them to surrender. The plague then spread to Constantinople along the Silk Road, and from Constantinople it was just a hop, skip, and a jump to Europe. And if that piece of history doesn't kill any desire for blueberry muffins, I can't imagine what would!

Best,

M

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I think they should have put "plausible" or "unconfirmed" instead of False, because really, who can prove either way? Your right, it could have been around for goodness knows how long before being recorded.

 

 

>_< Flying plague ridden bodies.... sounds nasty! ... kind of like the flying heads in Lord of the Rings

 

 

Still hungry (lol I eat while watching Bizzare Foods and Man VS Wild.. it takes a lot to get me grossed out!)

hmm... I wonder if I have another blueberry yogurt ....

- Jewls

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