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
Traditional rhyme Traditional rhyme A traditional rhyme is generally a saying, sometimes a proverb or an idiom, couched in the form of a rhyme and often passed down from generation to generation with no record of its original authorship. Many nursery rhymes may be counted as traditional rhymes. Examples of a traditional rhyme include the historically significant "Ring Around the Rosie", the doggerel love poem "Roses Are Red", and the wedding rhyme "Something old, something new". However, traditional rhymes are not necessarily ancient. As an example, the schoolchildren's rhyme commonly noting the end of a school year, "no more pencils, no more