AN OLD CHILDREN'S SONG.
[To THE EDITOR or THE " SPECTATOR."] Sut,—Your correspondents who inquire about the origin of the old song, " There was a frog lived in a well," will find a version in Lyrics front the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age. This version is from Thomas Ravenscroft's Melismata, 1611. It is called " The Marriage of the Frog and the Mouse," and begins:—
" It was the frog in the well, Humbledum, Crumbledum; And the merry mouse in the mill, Tweedle, twoedle, twine."
There are several other verses. A note at the end of the book says there are several versions of this "delightful old ditty," and gives one from Kirkpatrick Sharpe's Ballad Book, 1824, beginning :- " There lived a puddy in a well, And a merry mouse in a mill."
The note adds that doubtless Ravenscroft's version is older, and that a ballad entitled " A most strange weddinge of the frogge and the mouse" was licensed for printing in 1560.—I am, Sir,
he., M. HESTER VIXEN. 26 Wellington Square, Chelsea, S.W. 3.
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