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
Jack and Jill (nursery rhyme) part of the nursery rhyme. Early versions took the form: By the early 20th century this had been modified in some collections, such as L. E. Walter's, "Mother Goose's Nursery Rhymes" (London, 1919) to: A third verse, sometimes added to the rhyme, was first recorded in a 19th-century chapbook and took Twentieth-century versions of this verse include: As presented above and as presented in the accompanying published images, the rhyme is made up of six-line stanzas with a rhyming scheme of "aabccb" and a trochaic rhythm (with the stress falling on the first of a pair of syllables). Alternatively, if