Ring a ring a roses

I forget something interesting. When I read up on Eyam I stumbled upon a page, explaining how the nursery rhyme "ring a ring a roses" came about. According to the source it describes the symptoms of plague. One sign of the infection was a dark red rash like a ‘ring of roses'. A ‘pocketful of posies' was a bunch of herbs people carried to ward off the disease. ‘Atishoo, atishoo' was the sound of sneezing as the plague took hold. Finally came death - ‘we all fall down'.

I don´t know if this is is the true origin of the nursery but it is certainly very intriguing. It also makes the german version of the nursery extremely boring. Even though it starts off with a ring of roses as well it continious with "boys wear pants and girls wear skirts" and finishes off with "everyone falling in the mud". Not much room for interpretation really...