119 Fun Facts About Nursery Rhyme

Who could not put Humpty Dumpty together again?

All the king's horses and all the king's men can't mend him, yet the rhyme never says what he is: it probably began as a riddle, and the answer was an egg.

Which author turned Humpty Dumpty into a talking egg in an 1871 book?

Lewis Carroll put him in Through the Looking-Glass, where Humpty tells Alice that a word means just what he chooses it to mean, neither more nor less.

In 18th-century English slang, what kind of person was called a 'humpty dumpty'?

A short, clumsy person, in Francis Grose's slang dictionary of 1785. The words had named a drink before that, ale boiled with brandy, and only later an egg.

An unproven story says Humpty Dumpty was a Royalist cannon in which English town's siege of 1648?

Colchester. In the tale, Parliament's guns blast a Royalist cannon off the town wall, but the rhyme is not found in print until around 1800, a century and a half after the siege.

What did Jack and Jill go up the hill to fetch?

A pail of water. Climbing a hill for it may not be so odd: dew ponds were dug on hilltops, and they held water through droughts when the ponds in the valley failed.

The earliest printed 'Jack and Jill' pictured the pair as what?

Two boys, which is odd, because the two names had long stood for any lad and his lass: 'Jack shall have Jill', Puck promises in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

In a later verse of 'Jack and Jill', what does Jack use to mend his head?

Vinegar and brown paper sounds like nonsense but was a real household remedy: The Old Farmer's Almanack was still calling it good for a bruise in 1892.

Sarah Josepha Hale, who published 'Mary Had a Little Lamb', later campaigned to make which holiday national?

Thanksgiving. Hale began pressing for it in 1846 and kept at it for 17 years, until Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of thanks in 1863.

'Mary Had a Little Lamb' was the first thing recorded on which invention?

Thomas Edison's phonograph got its first test in 1877 when he spoke the rhyme at a cylinder wrapped in tinfoil and, to his amazement, the machine played his words back.

Which industrialist moved the schoolhouse claimed for 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' to Sudbury, Massachusetts, in the 1920s?

Henry Ford had the Redstone School hauled about 20 miles to his Wayside Inn estate, then reopened it in 1927 as a working school that taught children until 1951.

Which nursery rhyme began as an 1806 poem by Jane Taylor?

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. Jane Taylor wrote it as a poem called 'The Star', not a song: words and tune are first found together in an 1838 songbook, fourteen years after she died.

Which composer wrote twelve piano variations on the French melody used for 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star'?

Mozart was long thought to have picked the tune up in Paris in 1778, but his manuscript points to 1781 or 1782, and the set was published in Vienna in 1785.

Which Alice in Wonderland character recites the parody 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Bat'?

The Mad Hatter says he sang it at the Queen of Hearts' concert, where she bawled that he was murdering the time; ever since, he tells Alice, it has always been six o'clock.

In 1951 the BBC recorded 'Baa, Baa, Black Sheep' being played by which new kind of machine?

A computer. The BBC caught the Ferranti Mark 1 in Alan Turing's Manchester lab playing the rhyme, and when it stalled partway through 'In the Mood' the presenter laughed that the machine was 'obviously not in the mood'.

One theory says 'Baa, Baa, Black Sheep' was a complaint about what?

A medieval tax. The theory points to the wool duty Edward I imposed in 1275, yet no trace of the rhyme is found in print until hundreds of years later.

In 'Hey Diddle Diddle', which animal jumped over the moon?

The cow. J. R. R. Tolkien wrote a long spoof 'original' of the rhyme, and in The Lord of the Rings Frodo climbs on a table at the Prancing Pony inn to sing it.

What was Little Miss Muffet eating when the spider arrived?

Curds and whey. She is sometimes said to be the daughter of Thomas Muffet, a Tudor doctor who studied spiders, but he died about two centuries before the rhyme is first recorded.

Often drawn as a stool, the 'tuffet' in 'Little Miss Muffet' may first have meant what?

A grassy mound, a sense related to 'tuft'. The Oxford English Dictionary calls the stool meaning doubtful and suggests it may have come from people misreading the rhyme itself.

After his pipe and his bowl, who did Old King Cole call for?

His fiddlers three. In the oldest surviving version 'Good King Cole' calls only for his bowl and his fiddlers: the pipe came later.

Legend made King Coel, sometimes claimed as Old King Cole, father of Saint Helena and grandfather of which emperor?

Constantine. In Geoffrey of Monmouth's 12th-century telling, the Roman senator Constantius comes to subdue Coel, makes peace instead, and marries his daughter Helena, famed for her skill in music.

'Ring a Ring o' Roses' is often said to be about which disaster, a link folklorists reject?

The plague. Folklorists reject the link: the rhyme is not found in print before the 19th century, and no one is known to have tied it to the plague until the mid-20th.

'London Bridge Is Falling Down' may recall an attack around 1014 by which future king of Norway?

Olaf II. In the saga his ships loop cables around the bridge's piles and row downstream until it gives way, and an 1844 English translation of the victory verse begins 'London Bridge is broken down'.

In 'Hickory Dickory Dock', what does the mouse do when the clock strikes one?

Runs down. Exeter Cathedral lays claim to the rhyme: the door below its 15th-century clock has a hole cut in it, said to be for the bishop's cat to chase mice.

In 'Three Blind Mice', what does the farmer's wife use to cut off their tails?

A carving knife. The version printed in 1609 has no farmer's wife and no tails: it sings of 'Dame Julian, the miller and his merry old wife', who scrapes her tripe.

'Three Blind Mice' has been read as a reference to which monarch executing three bishops?

Mary I. The reading falls apart on the details: her bishops Ridley, Latimer and Cranmer were burned at the stake, not blinded, and the earliest lyrics do the mice no harm at all.

What is Little Bo-Peep told to do about her lost sheep?

Leave them alone and they'll come home. In later verses she finds them without their tails, which have been hung up to dry, and she tries to fix each one back on.

Jack Sprat could eat no fat, so what could his wife not eat?

Lean. It was a proverb for grown-ups first: a 1639 collection has Jack eating no fat while his partner 'doth love no leane', so 'betwixt them both they lick the dishes cleane'.

Where did Old Mother Hubbard go to fetch her poor dog a bone?

The cupboard. The joke goes on for verses: she fetches the dog a coffin from the undertaker's and comes back to find him laughing.

What did Little Jack Horner pull out of his Christmas pie?

A plum. Adults soon made him a byword for helping yourself: an 18th-century epigram asks what officials are 'but Jack Horners, who snug in their corners, cut freely the public pie'.

The 'real' Jack Horner was said to be steward to the last abbot of which abbey?

Glastonbury. The tale has him open a pie meant for Henry VIII and pull out the deeds to the manor of Mells, but the Horner family kept a deed showing the price he paid for it.

The name Mother Goose entered English through the translation of fairy tales by which French author?

Charles Perrault's book, the home of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, was subtitled 'Tales of My Mother Goose', and the name crossed the Channel when an English translation went on sale in 1729.

Georgie Porgie kissed the girls and made them do what?

Cry. In the older printed versions it is the girls themselves who come out to play and send him running: the boys who scare him off turn up only in later ones.

Which nursery rhyme began as a dance craze of the 1850s, with dancers shouting out its title?

Pop Goes the Weasel. It was a jig with no words but its shouted title, and dancing masters sold lessons in it as the fashion at Queen Victoria's own balls.

The 'Eagle' on City Road in 'Pop Goes the Weasel' is thought to be what kind of establishment?

A pub. On the usual reading the verse is about drink: in and out the Eagle is 'the way the money goes' until something has to be pawned, though no one is sure what the title's words mean.

In 'Sing a Song of Sixpence', what does a blackbird peck off?

A nose. The first printed verse had no birds at all: 'four and twenty naughty boys' were baked in the pie.

In 'Sing a Song of Sixpence', where was the king?

In his counting house, counting out his money. The pie was a real banquet stunt: a cookbook put into English in 1598 tells how to bake one so that live birds 'flie out when it is cut up'.

Which pirate is falsely said to have used 'Sing a Song of Sixpence' as a coded recruiting song?

Blackbeard. The tale is a hoax on purpose: the fact-checking site Snopes made it up for its 'Lost Legends' pages, to show how easily one trusted outlet's unsupported word gets believed.

How many men did the Grand Old Duke of York march up the hill?

Ten thousand. The duke may be a late arrival in his own rhyme: a song already in print by 1642 has the King of France lead an army up a hill and straight back down.

Where is Little Boy Blue while the sheep are in the meadow?

Under a haystack, fast asleep. Shakespeare may have known a version: in King Lear, Edgar, playing a mad beggar, asks a 'jolly shepherd' whether he sleeps or wakes while his sheep are in the corn.

Wee Willie Winkie is a rhyme from which country?

Scotland. William Miller, kept from a medical career by ill health, turned wood in Glasgow for a living, and this and his other nursery poems in Scots earned him the title Laureate of the Nursery.

'Row, Row, Row Your Boat' is usually sung as what kind of song?

A round, each singer starting a line behind the last. In Star Trek V, Kirk, Spock and McCoy try it beside a campfire in Yosemite.

In 'Hush, Little Baby', what is the first thing Mama promises to buy?

A mockingbird. Every gift comes with a back-up plan: if the mockingbird won't sing there is a diamond ring, and if the ring turns brass, a looking glass.

In 'Rock-a-bye Baby', where is the cradle?

On the tree top. A 1791 edition printed a moral under it for the grown-ups: 'This may serve as a warning to the proud and ambitious, who climb so high that they generally fall at last.'

What is the Itsy Bitsy Spider called in the UK?

Incy Wincy. An early printing is far less cute: a 1910 travel book about Baja California calls it 'that classic, the Spider Song' and begins 'Oh, the blooming, bloody spider went up the water spout'.

What grows in Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary's garden alongside silver bells?

Cockle shells. In The Secret Garden a boy sings the rhyme at cross little Mary Lennox until the other children join in, and 'Mistress Mary Quite Contrary' becomes her nickname.

In 'This Little Piggy', what did the third little piggy have?

Roast beef. For most of the rhyme's life they were plain 'little pigs', not piggies: The Real Mother Goose of 1916 still prints 'This little pig had roast beef'.

What does the pieman ask Simple Simon to show him first?

His penny. Simon hasn't any, and it sets the tone: in a later verse he goes fishing for a whale and gets no nearer the sea than his mother's bucket.

Doctor Foster went to which city 'in a shower of rain'?

Gloucester. One story makes him Edward I, thrown from his horse into a puddle there and vowing never to return, but the rhyme is not recorded until the 19th century, more than 500 years after that king died.

What did the Queen of Hearts make, all on a summer's day?

Tarts. The Knave steals them and the King beats him for it, and in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland the White Rabbit reads the rhyme out as the charge at the Knave's trial.

Who are the three men in a tub in 'Rub-a-dub-dub'?

The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. In early versions they are not at sea at all: the verse ends 'and all of them gone to the fair'.

The original 'Rub-a-dub-dub' mocked men gawping at which trio in a tub?

Three maids. The tradesmen we now put in the tub were the onlookers, 'all of them gone to the fair', and later nursery books quietly moved the men into the tub instead.

In 'Goosey Goosey Gander', what did the narrator do to the old man who wouldn't pray?

Threw him down the stairs. That ending was bolted on later: the earliest printed version, from 1784, has no old man and stops in my lady's chamber with 'a cup of sack and a race of ginger'.

In 'Ding Dong Bell', who put pussy in the well?

Little Johnny Green. He and the rescue came later: in a version a Winchester Cathedral organist wrote down in 1580, the cat is in the well and the bells simply ring her knell.

What did Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son steal?

A pig, but almost certainly not a live one: it was a sweet pig-shaped treat sold by street hawkers, which is how the verse can have it eaten at once.

In the usual birthday rhyme that begins with a child 'fair of face', which day's child 'is full of woe'?

Wednesday. The line named Wednesday Addams when her family reached television in 1964, and the first episode of Netflix's Wednesday is titled 'Wednesday's Child Is Full of Woe'.

On which day of the week was Solomon Grundy born?

Monday. The line named a DC Comics villain: in a 1944 Green Lantern story a zombie rises from a swamp and is dubbed Solomon Grundy after the rhyme's 'born on a Monday'.

Where did Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater keep his wife?

In a shell, a pumpkin shell, where 'he kept her very well'. A version printed in Aberdeen in 1868 is grimmer: he puts her in the wall and lets the mice eat her.

In 'Pat-a-cake', who is told to make the cake?

The baker's man. The letter on the cake has changed with the times: older printings mark it with a T 'for Tommy and me', newer ones with a B for Baby.

What did the old woman who lived in a shoe give her children?

Broth without any bread is all the children get before she whips them all soundly and puts them to bed.

In 'Ladybird, Ladybird', what is the name of the child left hiding under a pan?

Ann is the only child left, hiding under a pan, after the rhyme warns the ladybird that her house is on fire and her children are gone.

Which London church plays the tune of 'Oranges and Lemons' on its bells four times a day?

St Clement Danes plays the tune daily. German bombs gutted the church in 1941, and it was rebuilt and reconsecrated in 1958 as the central church of the Royal Air Force.

In the riddle 'As I was going to St Ives', who does the traditional answer say is going there?

The narrator: everyone else in the rhyme is met on the road, so all those sevens are a distraction. Egypt's Rhind papyrus set a similar sevens puzzle more than 3,500 years ago.

'Yankee Doodle' is the official state song of which US state?

Connecticut made it the official state song. British troops played it to make fun of ragtag colonial militiamen, yet Americans kept the tune as a patriotic air of their own.

In the 1770s, what was a 'macaroni', as in 'called it macaroni'?

A fashionable fop: a 'macaroni' was a young Englishman back from the Continent affecting Italian and French styles, so a Yankee who thought a feather made him that stylish was the joke.

In the rhyme 'Who Killed Cock Robin?', which bird confesses to the killing?

The sparrow owns up at once, naming his bow and arrow, and the other creatures share out the funeral jobs. The first four verses were printed in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book in 1744.

Which crime writer named novels after nursery rhymes, including 'Hickory Dickory Dock' and 'Five Little Pigs'?

Agatha Christie built whole plots on nursery rhymes: in A Pocket Full of Rye the murders follow 'Sing a Song of Sixpence', right down to blackbirds hidden in a pie.

What is the Roud Index, the number often listed beside a nursery rhyme?

A database of English-language folk songs: it gives every version of a song a single shared number, so researchers can link variants that collectors wrote down under different titles.

Which jazz singer had a 1938 hit with a swing version of the nursery rhyme 'A-Tisket, A-Tasket'?

Ella Fitzgerald, then singing with Chick Webb's orchestra, helped rework the playground rhyme into a swing tune, and it became her breakthrough hit.

According to the nursery rhyme, the Muffin Man lives on which London street?

Drury Lane is his address; real muffin men were street sellers who carried English muffins from door to door, ringing a bell that Parliament banned and they went on ringing anyway.

Which Broadway musical takes its title from the refrain of 'London Bridge Is Falling Down'?

My Fair Lady was lyricist Alan Jay Lerner's choice of title, echoing the line that ends every verse. Its heroine, Eliza Doolittle, sells flowers on the streets of London.

Which former Beatle released 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' as a 1972 rock single with his new band?

Paul McCartney wrote the tune with his wife Linda and recorded it with Wings. The nursery-rhyme single climbed into the UK top ten.

Which crime writer named novels after 'One, Two, Buckle My Shoe' and 'Hickory Dickory Dock'?

Agatha Christie raided the nursery for a string of murder mysteries, setting innocence against horror. Crooked House, from 'There Was a Crooked Man', is hers too.

In 'What Are Little Boys Made Of?', little girls are made of 'everything nice' and what else?

Sugar and spice is the girls' recipe, while boys get snips, snails and puppy-dogs' tails. The verse may be the work of the poet Robert Southey, though nobody is sure.

Which classroom staple, copyrighted in 1835, shares its tune with 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star'?

The Alphabet Song borrows a French melody first printed in 1761. 'Baa, Baa, Black Sheep' rides the same tune, so three nursery favourites share one melody.

Which jazz singer turned the rhyme 'A-Tisket, A-Tasket' into her breakthrough hit in 1938?

Ella Fitzgerald reworked the rhyme with arranger Al Feldman and sang it with the Chick Webb Orchestra. The original was a circle game in which a child drops a handkerchief.

Which French nursery song urges a late sleeper to wake up and ring the bells for morning prayers?

Frère Jacques was slowed into a minor-key funeral march by Gustav Mahler for his First Symphony. English speakers often sing the friar as Brother John.

In which Orwell novel do characters struggle to remember the words of 'Oranges and Lemons'?

Nineteen Eighty-Four treats the rhyme as a scrap of a vanished past that nobody can quite recall. Its last line warns of a chopper coming to chop off your head.

In 'Hey Diddle Diddle', which piece of tableware runs off with the spoon after the dog laughs?

The dish elopes in a rhyme first printed around 1765. Another of its lines gave English the phrase 'over the moon' for being delighted.

In the American 'Pop Goes the Weasel', which animal chases the weasel all around the mulberry bush?

The monkey thought it was all in fun until the weasel popped. A New York version from 1901 ran the chase around a chicken coop, with a possum in pursuit.

The 'tuffet' that Little Miss Muffet sits on most likely began as a word for what?

A grassy mound is the likeliest first meaning, from an old variant of the word 'tuft'. The footstool sense may come from readers misunderstanding the rhyme.

What does Little Jack Horner say about himself over his Christmas pie?

'What a good boy am I' turned Jack Horner into a byword for smug opportunism, above all in politics. Moralists later rewrote the rhyme to scold his greed.

In 'Sing a Song of Sixpence', what does a blackbird peck off the maid hanging out the clothes?

Her nose is put back in a gentler verse added later, in which a little Jenny wren flies down into the garden to mend the damage.

In 'Ring a Ring o' Roses', the children dancing in a ring sing of a pocket full of what?

Posies are small bunches of flowers, also known as nosegays. American children sing the same line after opening with 'Ring around the rosie'.

In 'The Wheels on the Bus', what sound do the wipers make all through the town?

Swish, swish, swish go the wipers in a song written by the American Verna Hills. It is based on the much older British tune 'Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush'.

What does the Itsy Bitsy Spider climb up before the rain comes down and washes the spider out?

The waterspout was 'a blooming spout' in one rowdy early version, which cursed the spider as a 'bloody, blooming son of a gun' for climbing back up.

According to the last line of 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat', life is but a what?

A dream is the song's verdict on life, in words first printed in 1852. The tune sung today arrived in 1881, in a collection that names Eliphalet Oram Lyte.

In 'This Little Piggy', where does the first little piggy go while the second stays home?

To market goes the first piggy, played on a baby's big toe. The opening line turned up in print in 1728, in a medley called 'The Nurses Song'.

In 'Pease Porridge Hot', how old is the porridge that some like 'in the pot'?

Nine days old is how some like their pease porridge. The rhyme doubles as a children's singing and clapping game.

What is Little Boy Blue told to come and blow while the sheep are in the meadow?

His horn has a possible echo in Shakespeare: King Lear includes a verse about a shepherd whose sheep are in the corn, saved by one blast of his mouth.

According to the rhyme 'The Muffin Man', on which London street does the muffin man live?

Drury Lane is his address in a manuscript of about 1820. Victorian households had fresh muffins brought round by a street seller known as a muffin man.

In the singing game 'The Farmer in the Dell', what is left standing alone in the final verse?

The cheese stands alone once every other player has been picked. The game was first recorded in Germany in 1826 and probably reached America with German immigrants.

In 'Three Little Kittens', what must the kittens find before their mother will give them any pie?

Their mittens turn up again and are later given a thorough soak. The verses are usually credited to the American poet Eliza Lee Cabot Follen.

London Bridge, of 'Falling Down' fame, was sold in 1968 and rebuilt beside a lake in which US state?

Arizona's Lake Havasu City got the bridge after Robert P. McCulloch bought it from the City of London. Each facing stone was numbered so it could be put back in place.

The spiced buns of the rhyme 'Hot Cross Buns' are traditionally eaten on which Christian holy day?

Good Friday is the day for the buns, whose cross stands for the Crucifixion. The rhyme grew from a street seller's cry that was in print by 1733.

What is Wee Willie Winkie wearing as he runs through the town tapping at the windows?

His nightgown suits a character who has become a personification of sleep, checking that children are in bed. William Miller published the poem in 1841.

In 'Yankee Doodle', what does Yankee Doodle ride to town before sticking a feather in his cap?

A pony carries him in a song British officers first sang to mock the scruffy colonial 'Yankees' serving beside them in the French and Indian War.

In the 1939 song 'I'm a Little Teapot', how does the teapot describe its own shape?

Short and stout is the teapot's self-portrait in a song George Sanders wrote for a children's dance school. Its easy 'Teapot Tip' replaced a tap routine the youngest pupils found too hard.

Which novelist took the title One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest from a nursery rhyme about geese?

Ken Kesey lifted the line from a rhyme about three geese in a flock: one flew east, one flew west, and one flew over the cuckoo's nest.

In the clapping rhyme 'Miss Mary Mack', what does Mary ask her mother for to see the elephants?

Fifty cents buys a look at elephants that jump so high they reach the sky. Printings from the early 1900s give the elephant lines with no mention of Mary Mack.

A 1917 book of soldiers' songs printed 'Old MacDonald Had a Farm' under the name of which US state?

Ohio was the title in Tommy's Tunes, a First World War collection in which the farmer is called Old Macdougal. The song's earliest ancestor comes from a 1706 opera.

In 'Polly Put the Kettle On', who takes the kettle off again once the guests have all gone away?

Sukey was an everyday pet name for Susan in the mid-1700s, just as Polly stood in for Mary. Charles Dickens quoted the rhyme in Barnaby Rudge in 1841.

The fortune-telling rhyme 'One for sorrow, two for joy' is recited on seeing which birds?

Magpies foretell what lies ahead by their number in an old superstition: a lone bird means sorrow, a pair joy, and the count runs on to silver, gold and a secret.

In 'Who Killed Cock Robin?', which small bird confesses to shooting Robin with an arrow?

The Sparrow owns up at once, and the other creatures share out the funeral jobs. One theory links the rhyme to the fall of Robert Walpole's government in 1742.

In 'Oranges and Lemons', which London place's 'great bell' can only answer 'I do not know'?

Bow means the church of St Mary-le-Bow. By tradition, anyone born within earshot of its bells counts as a true Cockney.

In 'I Had a Little Nut Tree', whose daughter comes to visit for the sake of the little nut tree?

The King of Spain's daughter comes asking for the tree's nutmeg and pear. One old suggestion, never proved, ties her to Juana of Castile's visit to Henry VII in 1506.

In the nursery rhyme, Tweedledum agrees to battle Tweedledee for spoiling his nice new what?

Rattle and battle rhyme in a quarrel that ends when a monstrous crow scares both heroes. Their names first reached print as a joke about the rival composers Handel and Bononcini.

In the rhyme about beasts 'fighting for the crown', which one does the lion beat around the town?

The unicorn and the lion are the two supporters on the United Kingdom's royal coat of arms. They have been paired there since James I came to the English throne in 1603.

Which Founding Father printed a version of 'For want of a nail the shoe was lost' in 1758?

Benjamin Franklin's version ends with the rider 'overtaken and slain by the enemy', all for want of care about a horseshoe nail. George Herbert had printed a shorter form back in 1640.

In 'Round and Round the Garden', what circles the garden before 'one step, two step'?

A teddy bear makes this one of the younger classics: it was first collected in Britain only in the late 1940s. The rhyme is acted out with fingerplay and ends in a tickle.

In the custom behind 'Jack Be Nimble', what did leaping a candle without dousing the flame foretell?

Good luck was the prize for a clean jump, because candle-leaping was once both a sport and a way of telling fortunes. The rhyme was first written down around 1815.

According to the rhyme, where has bonny Bobby Shafto gone, with silver buckles at his knee?

To sea he goes in a song linked to Robert Shafto, an eighteenth-century MP for County Durham. His supporters sang an extra verse during the 1761 election.

'Ride a Cock Horse' sends riders to which English town's cross to see a fine lady on a white horse?

Banbury has a statue of the rhyme's fine lady beside its cross. She has been linked to Elizabeth I and to Lady Godiva, with no firm evidence for either.

A gravestone in which US city's Granary Burying Ground has long been claimed as Mother Goose's?

Boston's legend makes the wife of Isaac Goose the original storyteller: either Mary Goose, who died in 1690, or Elizabeth Foster Goose. The evidence points the other way.

Which illustrator of 'Hey Diddle Diddle' is the namesake of America's top picture-book medal?

Randolph Caldecott drew a run of best-selling nursery-rhyme picture books. The Caldecott Medal has gone to the artist of the year's best American picture book since 1938.

One theory traces 'Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush' to women exercising at which English jail?

Wakefield prison had a mulberry tree that inmates walked around for exercise, and a local historian suggests its women prisoners began the song. The tree died in 2017.

In the rhyme that begins 'Lucy Locket lost her pocket', who is named as finding the pocket?

Kitty Fisher may have been Catherine Marie Fischer, a celebrated courtesan who died in 1767 and sat for portraits by Joshua Reynolds.

In 'This Is the House That Jack Built', what lay in the house until the rat came and ate it?

The malt starts a chain in which every verse adds a link: the rat that ate it, the cat that killed the rat, and so on. Stories built this way are called cumulative tales.

The Grand Old Duke of York is usually identified as Prince Frederick, second son of which king?

George III's second son commanded the British Army against revolutionary France. His Flanders campaign of 1793–94 ended in retreat, and the hill town of Cassel there has been suggested as the rhyme's hill.

Whose first children's book, illustrated by Maxfield Parrish, was the 1897 Mother Goose in Prose?

L. Frank Baum turned each rhyme into a prose tale of its own. The last one stars a girl named Dorothy who can talk to animals, a preview of his later Oz books.