Children's Games

The ancient British game played by children "Ring-a-ring o' roses" is said to be a macabre parody on the horrors of the Black Death, or plague.

In the mid nineteenth century English children were playing a game where they held hands and danced in a ring whilst singing the refrain “here we go round the mulberry bush.” There was a similar game with the lyrics “Here we go round the bramble bush.” The bramble bush may be an earlier version, possibly changed because of the difficulty of the alliteration, since mulberries do not grow on bushes.

The game “Chinese whispers” was first played by Victorian children at parties. In this game children, seated in a circle, whispered a message to each other until it arrives back at the person who started, usually changed out of all recognition. It was called “Chinese” because of the exotic connotations, the difficulty of the language and because the process of whispering sounded reminiscent of the language when spoken.

History's largest game of musical chairs began with 8,238 participants at the Anglo-Chinese School in Singapore on August 5, 1989. Three and a half hours later, the game ended with 15-year-old winner Xu Chong Wei on the last chair.

Source Dictionary of Phrase and Fable by Nigel Rees