The nursery rhyme "Ring Around the Rosey" is a rhyme about the plague. Infected people with the plague would get red circular sores ("Ring around the rosey"), these sores would smell very badly so common folks would put flowers on their bodies somewhere (inconspicuously), so that it would cover the smell of the sores ("a pocket full of posies"). Furthermore, people who died from plague would be burned so as to reduce the possible spread of the disease ("ashes, ashes, we all fall down!")
