Hey Diddle Diddle is a nursery rhyme.

''' =Rhyme=

Hey diddle diddle,

The cat and the fiddle,

The cow jumped over the moon,

The little dog laughed to see such fun,

And the dish ran away with the spoon.

an alternate version

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.

Origins

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It is likely that this poem is a satire of a scandal during the time of Queen Elizabeth I. The cat is Elizabeth I and the dog is Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, whom she once referred to as her 'lap dog'.

Tolkien's version

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J. R. R. Tolkien invented (by back formation) the imagined original ditty that is recorded in the simplified nursery rhyme. The title of this version as given in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil is "The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late"; it also appears in The Fellowship of the Ring. He also wrote a companion poem titled "The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon." This is included in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.

Rent

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In the Broadway musical Rent, Maureen Johnson (originally played by Idina Menzel) protests the destruction of a housing lot for the building of a cyber-arts studio. She uses imagery from this nursery rhyme in her protests, chronicling a twisted dream version of the rhyme in the number "Over the Moon".

Nursery rhymes