Emma Burns, 5, of Libertyville, Ill., rides the Flying Horse Carousel in Watch Hill. Riding the carousel and grabbing the brass ring has become a tradition in the Burns family; Emma’s mother and grandmother rode the carousel when they were younger.

The Providence Journal / Gretchen Ertl

Grab the reins. Hold tight. We’re galloping into the past, guided by bright lights and cheerful music: carousels.

If you’d like, call them merry-go-rounds, which is self-explanatory. You go around. And for some reason, that makes you merry.

“They have a magical way of transporting you back in time, back to when you rode your favorite horse as a child,” says Donna McMahon, vice chairwoman of the Crescent Park Carousel Commission, which oversees the East Providence icon.

“It’s not a terrifying ride,” says Ray Fullerton, manager of the Easton Beach Carousel in Newport. “It’s something we all have fond memories of.”

Catch a ride. Seven sites in the state offer the chance of mood-altering movement.

“It’s usually joy,” says Charles Trefes, manager of the Atlantic Beach Park in Westerly. “When a kid is crying because he doesn’t want to get off, that’s a good sign.”

“The thrill you see in people’s faces is just amazing,” says Kristen Aberizk, supervisor of the Flying Horse Carousel in Westerly.

In Pawtucket at Slater Park, Bill Mulholland, the director of parks, periodically stops at the carousel and sometimes sees grandparents with grandchildren. They’re standing behind the youngsters, holding them secure in their saddles. And when Mulholland looks closer, he sees glassy eyes, sometimes tears.

“I’ll say, ‘Is there anything wrong?’ And they’ll say, ‘I was just thinking back to when my father took me on this ride.’ ”

Carousels go way back, especially in Rhode Island, which has some of the oldest and grandest in the country. But we’ve got new, too. The youngest, 16 years, is at the Warwick Mall.

“It makes a lot of kids happy,” says Aram Garabedian, co-managing partner of the mall.

Don’t kid yourself. Adults enjoy a carousel, too, and pretty much for the same reason.

“It keeps you young,” says Roy Beye, president of C.L.M. Parks, which operates the carousel in Roger Williams Park in Providence.

Providence and Warwick offer the only year-round carousels in the state. For all the others, ’tis the season: summer.

While carousels in Rhode Island go back about a century, carousels themselves go back millennia. The International Association of Amusement Parks reports Byzantine Empire etchings from the year 500 showing people swinging in baskets around a pole.

However, the carousel as we know it comes from 18th-century France, according to the International Museum of Carousel Art. The French created a means of practicing a horseback sport played by Arabs and Turks in the Middle Ages involving running a lance through rings hung by a pole. The French prepared for the contest by practicing their lance skills while sitting on swinging wooden horses. This is why some carousels today feature rings around the perimeter.

“I’ve had people who would tell me that the carousel horses (at Slater Park) used to go up and down and there used to be a ring toss, which there never was,” Mulholland says. “Your memories from childhood get blurry at times.”

The carousel at Slater Park, which Mulholland calls “a working piece of art,” was built in 1895 by Charles Looff. It doesn’t have horses that go up and down, simply around. But, Mulholland says, “we have one of the fastest rides around.”

Pawtucket’s carousel, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, was originally located at Crescent Park in East Providence, and after stays in Providence and upstate New York, came to Pawtucket in 1910.

“People used to go to Crescent Park and look at the Looff carousel and say, ‘I want one of those and one of those for my carousel’ ” Mulholland says. “And they would carve them up and send them out.”

The current Crescent Park Looff Carousel, built in 1895, is on the National Register of Historic Places. It has 61 horses, 1 camel and four chariots.

“Originally built as a showcase for prospective buyers, it is the largest and most elaborate of Looff’s works,” according to McMahon.

The carved horses are jeweled, and varied, some depicted for hunting, some for jousting and some for pleasure riding. And the carousel is located in “an onion-shaped dome with stained glass windows. It’s just absolutely magnificent.”

The oldest carousel in the state is the Flying Horse Carousel in Westerly, built in 1883 by the Charles W. Dare Company in New York. It, too, is on the National Register of Historic Places, and is the oldest carousel of its kind in the country: flying.

There’s no floor. Its 20 horses hang from poles. And when the carousel turns, the horses, which have actual horsehair tails and manes, swing out, giving riders the feel of flying.

“The kids on the outside can reach out for the rings,” Aberizk says. “If they grab the gold one, they can stay on for another ride.”

Here, kids is the operative word. The carousel is intended for those aged 5 to 12, not taller than 5 feet and not more than 100 pounds.

“The horses are pretty small and fragile.”

Also in Westerly is the 1915 Herschell-Spillman carousel at Atlantic Beach Park, which used to be at Rocky Point Amusement Park in Warwick, which went out of business in 1995.

“This is the original location for our carousel,” Trefes says. “But the carousel itself was actually at Rocky Point, which we bought when they went out.”

The Atlantic Beach Park bought Rocky Point’s carousel, Trefes says, but equipped it with 45 100-year-old horses it had from an earlier carousel.

The Easton Beach Carousel, a Herschell bought new in 1952, has 60 aluminum horses and two stage coaches. It used to be on the first floor of a building, which was ruined and rebuilt after Hurricane Bob in 1991. Now it’s on the second floor.

Roger Williams Park in Providence has had a few carousels since1897. The current one was purchased new in 1990, and it’s big, with 60 animals (55 horses, two dragons, one rabbit, one lion, one camel) and two chariots. It’s also 50 feet in diameter with 3,160 lights.

“It is huge,” Reye says. “Most people come in and say, ‘wow.’ ”

By comparison, the carousel in Warwick Mall is on the small side, with 16 horses, one dragon and one rabbit. But, Garabedian says, it’s still popular.

“Carousels have been forever a part of our lives in Rhode Island.”

brourke@projo.com