My first reaction was to yell out loud and run to the bathroom to consol myself and sob for a while. My eye was on fire and I just kept my hand over it, applying a wee bit of pressure to soothe the pain. I was thinking, gosh I think my skull is cracked and I was wondering if I was bleeding. After a few minutes, I eventually took my hand off my eye when the shooting pain had subsided a little and looked at my face in the bathroom mirror. I have a cut about my right eye obviously from the frame of my specs and a little swelling and bruising.
Emerging from the bathroom, Megan was in tears, clearly upset and feeling awful and after seeing the extent of my "injuries", She said "Sorry mummy. I didn't mean to hurt you". I explained that it was VERY sore but it was after all an accident and that she didn't intentially mean to hurt me. All was forgiven, tears were dried and we moved on.
This is what my eye looks like today....
It is often suggested that the rhyme relates to the symptoms of plague, specifically the Black Death - the bubonic plague that spread through Europe in the 1340s, or to the Great Plague of London, 1665/6. The plausible-sounding theory has it that the 'ring' was the ring of sores around the mouths of plague victims, who subsequently sneezed and fell down dead.
How ironic. So I have the "black" eye and fell down, but at least I'm not dead!!!
