The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #80092   Message #1456746
Posted By: Q (Frank Staplin)
09-Apr-05 - 10:57 PM
Thread Name: Origins: do you know the muffin man
Subject: RE: Origins: do you know the muffin man
In one of the Scouting songs, he lives on Gingerbread Lane. In another, he lives on Cherry Lane.

Iona and Peter Opie, "The Singing Game." pp. 379-382, discuss this old ring game, which is found "in a manuscript addition to Douce Adds 134(8) no. 3, ca. 1820, in the Bodleian Library."

Don't you know the Muffin-man
And don't you know his name
And don't you know the muffin-man
That lives in Drury Lane?

Frank Bellow described the game in the "Art of Amusing," 1866, in which "An officer in the Guards, genus Swell, 'pwoposed that we should play the Muffin Man"... "'Oh, it's vewy jolly, I asshua yaw. We all sit wound in a wing, yaw know, and one of us, yaw know, sings-
Do yaw know the muffin man,
Do yaw know his name,
Do yaw know the muffin man,
That lives in Cwumpet Lane.'"
And so on.
The Opies, p. 380.