"Hey Diddle Diddle" is an English nursery rhyme. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19478.
Inception
1800
Overview
"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.
Lyrics and music
A version 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.
The rhyme is the source of the English expression "over the moon", meaning "delighted, thrilled, extremely happy".
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). The word "sport" in the rhyme is sometimes replaced with "fun", "a sight", or "craft".
