What is the real meaning behind the popular children's song "Ring Around the Rosie"?

The origin is not clear. There are a number of theories, but none of the probable theories have anything to do with plague.

Most likely answer: the song may have been used to circumvent a religious dancing ban.


What few people realise is that the usual explanation of this rhyme being about the Black Death may be widely known, but it is also totally unsubstantiated piffle.
http://www.snopes.com/language/literary/rosie.htm


Although folklorists have been collecting and setting down in print bits of oral tradition such as nursery rhymes and fairy tales for hundreds of years, the earliest print appearance of "Ring Around the Rosie" did not occur until the publication of Kate Greenaway's Mother Goose or The Old Nursery Rhymes in 1881. For the "plague" explanation of "Ring Around the Rosie" to be true, we have to believe that children were reciting this nursery rhyme continuously for over five centuries, yet not one person in that five hundred year span found it popular enough to merit writing it down.

Children were apparently reciting this plague-inspired nursery rhyme for over six hundred years before someone finally figured out what they were talking about, as the first known mention of a plague interpretation of "Ring Around the Rosie" didn't show up until James Leasor published The Plague and the Fire in 1961.

So, what does "Ring Around the Rosie" mean, then? Folklorist Philip Hiscock suggests:

The more likely explanation is to be found in the religious ban on dancing among many Protestants in the nineteenth century, in Britain as well as here in North America. Adolescents found a way around the dancing ban with what was called in the United States the "play-party." Play-parties consisted of ring games which differed from square dances only in their name and their lack of musical accompaniment.

Interestingly, the first mention of it is in 1898, which suggested it had pagan origin.

The origins and meanings of the game have long been unknown and subject to speculation. In 1898, A Dictionary of British Folklore contained the belief that an explanation of the game was of pagan origin, based on the Sheffield Glossary comparison of Grimm's Teut. Myth. The theory states that it is in reference to Pagan myths and cited a passage which states, "Gifted children of fortune have the power to laugh roses, as Treyja wept gold."

While the true origin may never be known, what we can say with some certainty is that it has nothing to do with plague.

Strong evidence against plague theory:

Folklore scholars regard the theory as baseless for several reasons:

The plague explanation did not appear until the mid-twentieth century.

The symptoms described do not fit especially well with the Great Plague.

The great variety of forms makes it unlikely that the modern form is the most ancient one, and the words on which the interpretation are based are not found in many of the earliest records of the rhyme.

European and 19th-century versions of the rhyme suggest that this "fall" was not a literal falling down, but a curtsy or other form of bending movement that was common in other dramatic singing games.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_a_Ring_o%27_Roses