Three Blind Mice

DESCRIPTION: "Three blind mice (x2), See how they run (x2); They all ran after the farmer's wife. She cut off their tails with a carving knife. Did you ever see such a sight in your life As three blind mice?"
AUTHOR: Thomas Ravenscroft?
EARLIEST DATE: 1609 (Ravenscroft's Deuteromelia)
KEYWORDS: animal disability
FOUND IN: Britain(England,Scotland(Aber)) US(NE)
REFERENCES (16 citations):
Greig/Duncan8 1672, "Three Blind Mice" (1 text, 1 tune)
Williams-FolkSongsOfTheUpperThames, p. 297, "Three Blind Mice" (1 text) (also Williams-Wiltshire-WSRO Ox 267)
Linscott-FolkSongsOfOldNewEngland, pp. 283-284, "Three Blind Mice" (1 text, 1 tune)
Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 348, "Three blind mice, see how they run!" (2 texts)
Baring-Gould-AnnotatedMotherGoose #253, p. 156, "(Three blind mice, see how they run!)"
Jack-PopGoesTheWeasel, p. 212, "Three Blind Mice" (2 texts)
Dolby-OrangesAndLemons, p. 111, "Three Blind Mice" (1 text)
Heart-Songs, p. 10, "Three Blind Mice" (1 text, 1 tune)
Fuld, p. 576, "Three Blind Mice"
Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 413, "Three Blind Mice" (1 text)
Harbin-Parodology, #422, p. 103, "Three Blind Mice" (1 text)
Rodeheaver-SociabilitySongs, p. 121, "Three Blind Mice" (1 text, 1 tune)
BoyScoutSongbook1997, p. 29, "Three Blind Mice" (1 text, 1 tune)
National-4HClubSongBook, p. 59, "Three Blind Mice" (1 text, 1 tune)
Averill-CampSongsFolkSongs, pp. 107, 128, 393, 433, 435, 441, 447, 520, "Three Blind Mice" (notes only)
DT, (THREEBLN*)
ST FSWB413A (Full)
Roud #3753
SAME TUNE:
Three (Blind/Decrepit/Myopic) Rodents (Pankake/Pankake-PrairieHomeCompanionFolkSongBook, p. 208; cf. Averill-CampSongsFolkSongs, p. 128)
Who Can Tell? Catch ("Why the Fresh? (x3) Who can tell? (x3)) (Henry Randall Waite, _Carmina Collegensia: A Complete Collection of the Songs of the American Colleges_ first edition 1868, expanded edition, Oliver Ditson, 1876, p. 15)
Marijuana, Marijuana, LSD, LSD (Averill-CampSongsFolkSongs, p. 107)
NOTES [210 words]: Fuld reports this as "the earliest printed secular song which is still extremely well known" (but compare "Greensleeves"). Fuld also prints a plate of the 1609 music -- in a somewhat pre-modern notation, and with words noticeably different from those sung today.
Neither Fuld nor any other source I have seen offers an explanation for why this bit of silliness survives when so many better pieces died out. The Baring-Goulds note that there have been attempts to link it to political events -- e.g. the Farmer's Wife is Mary I Tudor (perhaps considered a farmer's wife because of her marriage to Philip of Spain), and the mice are Protestant leaders who opposed her. This idea probably goes back to the hyperimaginative Katherine Elwes Thomas, who in The Real Personages of Mother Goose, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co., 1930, p. 127, says that Mary is the Farmer's Wife and the mice are Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley. By Thomas's standards, this is relatively reasonable, since the first attestation of the poem is only 56 years after Mary Tudor died, rather than the several centuries that she usually waves away. But in Ravenscroft's version, it's not a farmer's wife but a miller's wife, and no tails are cut, plus there is a reference to "Dame Julius." . - RBW
Last updated in version 6.3
File: FSWB413A

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