The Muffin Man is preserved in the Bodleian Library with lyrics very similar to those used today: <poem> Do you know the muffin man? The muffin man, the muffin man. Do you know the muffin man Who lives in Drury Lane?</poem> Victorian households had many of their fresh foods delivered, such as muffins, which were delivered door-to-door by a muffin man. The "muffin" in question was the bread product known in the United States as English muffins, not the much sweeter cupcake-shaped American variety. Drury Lane is a thoroughfare bordering Covent Garden in London. The rhyme and game appear to have spread to
Rhyme-as-reason effect Rhyme-as-reason effect The rhyme-as-reason effect (or "Eaton-Rosen" phenomenon) is a cognitive bias whereupon a saying or aphorism is judged as more accurate or truthful when it is rewritten to rhyme. In experiments, subjects judged variations of sayings which did and did not rhyme, and tended to evaluate those that rhymed as more truthful (controlled for meaning). For example, the statement "What sobriety conceals, alcohol reveals" was judged to be more accurate than by different participants who saw "What sobriety conceals, alcohol unmasks". The effect could be caused by the "Keats" heuristic, according to which a statement's truth is evaluated according