Oddly enough Ashley, the wiki you link to describes that explanation as a myth and gives a link to
this debunking source.
I'm not so sure though about this debunking, for a number of reasons:
- AFAIK most nursery rhymes have rather bleak origins and I'm not sure they were usually written so soon after they had started being taught.
- The words most explainable by the plague probably date back to the later one in London, 1665.
- It isn't surprising to find many variants and the ones least related to plague are only a few examples of chants with similar cadence and tune used throught Europe for a similar child's play, so the one invented after the plague probably just ran into many variations and got mixed with other existing ones.
- The explanation of "ashes" and "a-tishoo" are both plausible and these could have both been competing ideas right from the start.
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Inutil insegnà al mus, si piart timp, in plui si infastidìs la bestie.
Hypography Forum PITA...... er, Administrator.
