Hey Diddle Diddle
| "Hey Diddle Diddle" | |
|---|---|
| Roud #19478 | |
 The Cow jumps over the moon, according to William Wallace Denslow |
|
| Written by | Traditional |
| Published | c. 1765 |
| Written | England |
| Language | English |
| Form | Nursery rhyme |
"Hey Diddle Diddle" (also "Hi Diddle Diddle", "The Cat and the Fiddle", or "The Cow Jumped Over the Moon") is an English nursery rhyme. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19478.
Contents |
Lyrics[edit]
One of the most commonly used modern versions of the rhyme is:
Hey diddle diddle,
The Cat and the fiddle,
The Cow jumped over the moon.
The little Dog laughed,
To see such sport,
And the Dish ran away with the Spoon.[1]
In more recent versions the archaic 'sport' is replaced with 'fun' or 'a sight'
Older versions of the nursery rhyme use "craft" instead of "sport" to maintain the rhyming scheme of AABCCB.
Hey diddle diddle,
The Cat and the fiddle,
The Cow jumped over the moon.
The little Dog laughed,
To see such craft,
And the Dish ran away with the Spoon.[2]
Origins[edit]
The book comments:"It must be a little dog that laugh'd, for a great dog would be ashamed to laugh at such nonsense."[3] There is a reference in Thomas Preston's A lamentable tragedy mixed ful of pleasant mirth, conteyning the life of Cambises King of Percia, printed in 1569 that may refer to the rhyme:
They be at hand Sir with stick and fidle;
They can play a new dance called hey-didle-didle.[1]
There are numerous theories about the origin of the rhyme, these include: James Orchard Halliwell's suggestion that it was a corruption of ancient Greek, probably advanced as a result of a deliberate hoax; that it was connected with Hathor worship; that it refers to various constellations (Taurus, Canis minor, the Big Dipper etc.); that it describes the Flight from Egypt; that it depicts Elizabeth, Lady Katherine Grey, and her relationships with the earls of Hertford and Leicester; that it deals with anti-clerical feeling over injunctions by Catholic priests for harder work; that it describes Katherine of Aragon (Katherine la Fidèle); Catherine, the wife of Peter the Great; Canton de Fidèle, a supposed governor of Calais and the game of cat (trap-ball).[1] This profusion of unsupported explanations was satirised by J.R.R. Tolkien in his fictional explanations of 'The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late'.[4] Most scholarly commentators consider these unproven and that the verse is probably meant to be simply nonsense.[1] The melody commonly associated with the rhyme was first recorded by the composer and nursery rhyme collector James William Elliott in his National Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Songs (1870).[5]
Adaptations[edit]
- 1978 Soviet animated film "A Fantastic Tale" (Russian: Чудеса в решете) by Andrei Khrzhanovsky, based on translation of Samuil Marshak.[6]
- Hey Diddle Diddle was featured in Jim Henson's Mother Goose Stories.
Notes[edit]
- ^ a b c d I. Opie and P. Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), pp. 203-4.
- ^
Charles Madison Curry and Erle Elsworth Clippinger,Children's Literature, A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes (1920), p25. - ^ A. H. Bullen's 1904 facsimile of Newbery's 1791 edition of Mother Goose's Melody (on-line)
- ^ S. H. Gale, Encyclopedia of British Humorists: Geoffrey Chaucer to John Cleese (London: Taylor & Francis, 1996), p. 1127.
- ^ J. J. Fuld, The Book of World-Famous Music: Classical, Popular, and Folk (Courier Dover Publications, 5th edn., 2000), ISBN 0486414752, p. 502.
- ^ Animator.ru: «A FANTASTIC TALE»
