Origins and Meaning
The rhyme is first recorded in a British manuscript of around 1820 preserved in the Bodleian Library with lyrics very similar to those used today:
Do you know the muffin man
the muffin man the muffin man.
Do you know the muffin man,
That lives in (down) Cherry Lane?
Victorian households had many of their fresh foods delivered; muffins would be delivered door-to-door by a muffin man. The "muffin" in question was the bread product known in the U.S.A. as English muffins, not the much sweeter cupcake-shaped American variety. Drury Lane is a thoroughfare in Westminster.
The rhyme and game appear to have spread to other countries in the mid-nineteenth century, particularly the USA and the Netherlands. As with many traditional songs, there are regional variations in wording. Another popular version substitutes "Dorset Lane" for Drury Lane.
Read more about this topic: Muffin Man
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“Lucretius
Sings his great theory of natural origins and of wise conduct; Plato
smiling carves dreams, bright cells
Of incorruptible wax to hive the Greek honey.”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)
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