There Was an Old Woman Who Lived Under a Hill

There was an old woman lived under a hill is a nursery rhyme first printed in 1714 and possibly much older.

Text

:There was an old woman lived under the hill,:And if she's not gone she lives there still.:Baked apples she sold, and cranberry pies,:And she's the old woman that never told lies. [Anonymous, "The Only True Mother Goose Melodies" (Boston, c.1843), p. 26.]

Origins and Development

In 1714 these lines:There was an old woman:Liv'd under a hill,:And if she ben't gone,:She lives there still--appeared as part of a catch in "The Academy of Complements". [James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales: A Sequel to the Nursery Rhymes of England, p. 14.] In 1744 these lines appeared by themselves (in a slightly different form) in "Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book", the first extant collection of nursery rhymes. [William S. Baring-Gould and Ceil Baring-Gould, "The Annotated Mother Goose" (New York, 1962), p.28.] One eighteenth-century editor, possibly Oliver Goldsmith, added a note: "This is a self evident Proposition which is the very Essence of Truth. "She lived under the hill, and if she is not gone she lives there still." Nobody will presume to contradict this." ["Mother Goose's Melody" (London, c. 1760), reprinted c. 1780, p. 24. No copies of the first printing are extant. For the possible identity of the editor, see "The Annotated Mother Goose", p. 333.]

The 1810 edition of "Gammer Gurton's Garland" included a variant:Pillycock, Pillycock, sate on a hill,:If he's not gone--he sits there still.Edgar, in Shakespeare's "King Lear", appears to refer to this version when he says "Pillycock sat on Pillycock hill," which indicates that the rhyme was known as early as 1605 or so. The final lines first appeared in print c. 1843. ["The Annotated Mother Goose", pp. 28-29.]

References