The nursery rhyme “Ring Around the Rosey” is a rhyme about the plague. People infected with the plague would get red circular sores (“Ring around the Rosey...”). These sores would smell very bad so people would hide flowers on their bodies in an attempt to mask the smell (“pocket full of posies...”).  People who died from the plague would be burned to reduce the spread of the disease (“ashes, ashes, we all fall down”).