ABSTRACT
It is probably not true that ‘Ring-a-ring o’ roses’ is about people ‘falling down’ from the plague during the ‘black death’. Nonetheless, poetry and history often meet. Shakespeare’s Richard III and Henry IV and V seem closer to us than are the same monarchs in history textbooks.Collections like Kenneth Baker’s A Children’s History in Verse, and Brian Moses’ Blood and Roses: British History in Poetry also remind us that history is told in poetry, not just prose.
