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
One for Sorrow (nursery rhyme) John Brand's "Observations on Popular Antiquities" on Lincolnshire with the lyric: One of the earliest versions to extend this was published, with variations, in Michael Aislabie Denham's "Proverbs and Popular Saying of the Seasons" (London, 1846) On occasion, jackdaws, crows and other Corvidae are associated with the rhyme, particularly in America where magpies are less common. A version of the rhyme became familiar to many UK children when it became the theme tune of an ITV children's TV show called "Magpie", which ran from 1968 to 1980. The popularity of this version is thought to have displaced the many regional