History time, folks! Gather 'round!
The original story is that "Ring Around the Rosie" was a nursery rhyme invented during the Black Plague of the 13th century, with the lyrics ascribed:
This is said to refer to the counting of Rosary beads.
At the time of the Black Plague, people were of the belief that smells were what caused the spreading of the plague. This line is supposed to refer to children keeping sweet-smelling flowers in their pockets so that they won't smell the "bad smells" and catch the plague.
This is supposed to refer to the burning of plague victims' homes in an effort to stop the spread. Some versions replace this with
"achoo," supposedly to signify the sneezing of the plague victims.
This is supposed to refer to the amount of people left dying in the streets and falling over due to weakness and famine.
The funny thing is, that's not the story at all! The earliest reference to the "Ring Around the Rosie" game we know of is from Kate Greenaway’s
Mother Goose or The Old Nursery Rhymes, which was printed in 1881 -- a full
five hundred years after the Black Plague swept Europe (and a little over 200 years after the London Plague!)
There's also multiple different versions of the original song published around the same time as the first 1881 publication!
This publication was from William Wells Newell in 1883, and the following was published in Charlotte Sophia Burne’s
Shropshire Folk-Lore, also from 1883.
It's overall just a children's game that people added a history to in order to make it more interesting, even though the history isn't necessarily true.