Ring around the rosies Pocket full of posies Atisue atisue We all fall down
	I've just been reading this article about the origin of nursery rhymes. It sounded all too much like the truth for me to treat it as anything but bunk. However, this opens a whole new can of worms, and I know how much people like eating worms here. Think of a Nursery rhyme, and see if you can come up with a plausable, but entirely silly, reason for it's being. To help you, I give you a 'factual' case, and my 'hypothetical' case. RING A RING OF ROSIES - this whole nursery rhyme refers to the Black Plague, and that the ring of rosies was a rash, one of the first signs. Posies were meant to ward off disease, and once you started sneazing, you were seen as good as dead, thus atishue atishue, we all fall down. Told you it sounds too plausible! Well, here's my attempt.
			Baa Baa black sheep Have you any wool? Yes sir, yes sir, Three bags full One for the master One for the Dame And one for the little kid Who live down the lane
		BAA BAA BLACK SHEEP - the black sheep actually refers to a player in a predecessor to a card game, commonly known as go fish. What used to happen is that each player assigned themselves an animal, and before you asked them if they had a particualar card, you had to make the noise of the animal. The wool reference, is of course, meant to represent kings, as in, do you have any kings? (After all, everyone knows how easy it is to pull the wool over the eyes of a king.) In this old version of go fish (which changed its name to go fish after a particularly famous game where someone picked a fish as an animal character, as a means of making sure that no one could ask him for cards - after all, what noise does a fish make? Thus, the rules, and the name of the game, were appropriately changed) As I was saying, in this old version of go fish, it was customary to collect all four cards, rather than just pairs. So by saying that he had three bags full, the Black Sheep (there was more than one player that wanted to be a sheep at this particular game, thuse the doubling of the baas, meaning the black sheep) indicated that he indeed had three kings. However, everyone immediately knew he was jesting, because the person who had asked for the kings had already received kings off three other players, and had mistakenly thought he needed another one. The Black sheep rubs it in even further, by naming the other people at the table by name rather than by animal reference, thus humiliating the asker utterly. Someone who was watching the game happened to notice that the entire conversation happened to rhyme, and repeated it at every party he went to, accompanied by raucus laughter and appetisers all round. Anybody got a better one? __________________________________________ Darren Rosetta Musician, visionary and all-round nice guy