Ashes to Ashes

One of my earliest memories involves holding hands with other preschoolers and dancing around in a circle, chanting: “Ring around the rosies, a pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall down!” As we shouted the last word, we threw ourselves to the ground, laughing as if we had just heard the funniest joke. It is one of those moments one looks back upon as an adult and asks, “What WAS that?” Weird. Really weird.

You know the rhyme, of course. Most school children know it, or did, until recently. I was surprised, when I looked it up this morning, however, to discover that we had misquoted it. The actual rhyme goes: “Ring-a-ring o’ roses, A pocket full of posies, A-tishoo! A-tishoo! We all fall down.”

I find it interesting that, somehow, in the course of time and through the perversions inevitable to an oral tradition, the words “a-tishoo! A-tishoo!” became “ashes, ashes.” I find it interesting, but not surprising, as the underlying realities that motivated the poem’s construction are communicated by both expressions.

This poem first appeared in print in an 1881 book, Mother Goose. By that time, it was already well-known, a part of oral tradition passed from one generation of children to the next. Its roots can be found in the Great Plague of London in 1664-65, which resulted in more than 70,000 deaths at a time when the city’s population numbered only 460,000. (Picture Monty Python’s Quest for the Holy Grail and the call in it: “Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!”)

The disease, caused by the bacillus Pasteurella pestis, was transmitted to humans in crowded urban areas by rat fleas. In the rhyme, “ring o’ roses” refers to the circular rosy rash that was one of the plagues early symptoms. And the phrase “pocket full of posies” stands for the herbs people carried in their pockets, believing they offered protection against the disease. The final two lines, “A-tishoo! A-tishoo! We all fall down,” tell of the plague’s fatal sneeze, which preceded physical collapse; literally, the victim fell down dead.

Okay. So why did we all laugh like crazy as we fell down? Weird. It just doesn’t seem that funny.

Anyhow. In my memory of the Pacific Northwest’s 1960s version of this rhyme, the words were changed to “ashes.” I wonder if this occurred because the vocal similarities between the two expressions. Perhaps. “Ashes” is easier to say than “A-tishoo.” Then again, it may have been my faulty hearing and maybe the teacher (who also, for some reason, thought this was all very funny) had said “a-tishoo.” Well, regardless, it was a reasonable replacement. The sneeze and subsequent demise of the victim are aptly summarized by the word “ashes,” for, indeed, we humans are little more than ashes. From ashes we have come, and to ashes we will return.

Yesterday, according to the church calendar, was Ash Wednesday. This day marks the beginning of the forty day period called Lent that precedes Resurrection Sunday. The observance of Ash Wednesday began in the 8^th century and was first described by an Anglo-Saxon abbot named Aelfric (955-1020). In his Lives of the Saints, he writes, “We read in the books both in the Old Law and in the New that the men who repented of their sins bestrewed themselves with ashes and clothed their bodies with sackcloth. Now let us do this little at the beginning of our Lent that we strew ashes upon our heads to signify that we ought to repent of our sins during the Lenten fast.”

As Aelfric observed, the pouring of ashes on one's body and dressing in sackcloth is an ancient practice meant to manifest inner repentance or mourning. It is mentioned several times in the Old Testament. What is probably the earliest occurrence is found at the very end of the book of Job. Job, having been rebuked by God, confessed, "Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes" (Job 42:6). Other examples are found in 2 Samuel 13:19, Esther 4:1,3, Isaiah 61:3, Jeremiah 6:26, Ezekiel 27:30, and Daniel 9:3. In the New Testament, Jesus alluded to the practice in Matthew 11:21: "Woe to you, Korazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! If the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes."

In some churches on Ash Wednesday, Christians are invited to receive a daub of ashes on their foreheads. The pastor or minister applies the ashes in the shape of the cross on the forehead of each, while speaking the words, "For dust you are and to dust you shall return" (Genesis 3:19). This is what God spoke to Adam and Eve after they had eaten of the forbidden fruit and had fallen into sin. These words indicated to our first parents the bitterest fruit of their sin, namely death. The ashes on the forehead are meant to remind the Christian of his or her sinfulness and mortality, and, thus, his or her need to repent and get right with God before it is too late. The cross that is formed is meant to remind each Christian of the Good News, that through Jesus Christ crucified there is forgiveness for all sins, guilt, and punishment.

At Living Hope, we don’t daub ashes on foreheads, but maybe it would be wise if we did. Those ashes would serve as a testimony to us of the inner repentance and humility true followers of Jesus will manifest. A daub of ashes would not give us a better standing with God, but they would serve as a reminder that we are but made of ashes, that our lives depend on God’s grace, and that only through Jesus Christ and His cross can we find forgiveness and eternal life.

As I think about all this, maybe it is a good thing that one of my earliest memories is a vivid, kinetic reminder of my mortality and of my need for real life, a life that extends beyond the grave. After all, “Ashes, Ashes, We all fall down.”