Hickory Dickory Dock

"Hickory Dickory Dock" or "Hickety Dickety Dock" is a popular English language nursery rhyme. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 6489.

For other uses, see Hickory Dickory Dock (disambiguation).
"Hickory Dickory Dock"
Illustration by William Wallace Denslow, from a 1901 Mother Goose collection
Nursery rhyme
Publishedc. 1744
Songwriter(s)Unknown

Lyrics and music
Hickety Dickety Dock, illustrated by Denslow

The most common modern version is:

Hickory, dickory, dock.
The mouse ran up the clock.
The clock struck one,
The mouse ran down,
Hickory, dickory, dock.[1]

Other variants include "down the mouse ran"[2] or "down the mouse run"[3] or "and down he ran" or "and down he run" in place of "the mouse ran down".

Score

Origins and meaning

The earliest recorded version of the rhyme is in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, published in London in about 1744, which uses the opening line: 'Hickere, Dickere Dock'.[1] The next recorded version in Mother Goose's Melody (c. 1765), uses 'Dickery, Dickery Dock'.[1]

The rhyme is thought by some commentators to have originated as a counting-out rhyme.[1] Westmorland shepherds in the nineteenth century used the numbers Hevera (8), Devera (9) and Dick (10) which are from the language Cumbric.[1]

The rhyme is thought to have been based on the astronomical clock at Exeter Cathedral. The clock has a small hole in the door below the face for the resident cat to hunt mice.[4]

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See also

Notes
  1. Opie, I.; Opie, P. (1997). The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. pp. 185–186.
  2. The American Mercury, Volume 77, p. 105
  3. "Mother Goose's chimes, rhymes & melodies". H.B. Ashmead. c. 1861. Retrieved 14 November 2009.
  4. Cathedral Cats. Richard Surman. HarperCollins. 2004
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