Visual impairment men in the dark) touch an elephant to learn what it is like. Each one feels a different part, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then compare notes and learn that they are in complete disagreement. "Three Blind Mice" is a medieval English nursery rhyme about three blind mice whose tails are cut off after chasing the farmer's wife. The work is explicitly incongruous, ending with the comment "Did you ever see such a sight in your life, As three blind mice?" Poet John Milton, who went blind in mid-life, composed On His Blindness,
Three Blind Mice in 1842 when it was published in a collection by James Orchard Halliwell. Amateur music composer Thomas Oliphant (1799–1873) noted in 1843 that: This absurd old round is frequently brought to mind in the present day, from the circumstance of there being an instrumental Quartet by Weiss, through which runs a musical phrase accidentally the same as the notes applied to the word "Three Blind Mice". They form a "third" descending, C, B, A. Robert Schumann's Kreisleriana #7, which is arguably about a cat (Murr), appears to be based upon "Three Blind Mice", but in a predominantly minor key. "Three