Hey Diddle Diddle

There are many versions of this nursery rhyme, but my favorite is in “The Hobbit:”

There's an inn, there's an inn, there's a merry old inn beneath an old grey hill,

There they brew a beer so brown the Man in the Moon himself came down one night to drink his fill.

The ostler has a tipsy cat that plays a five-stringed fiddle;

And up and down he saws his bow, now squeaking high, now purring low, now sawing in the middle.

So the cat on the fiddle played hey-diddle-diddle, a jig that would wake the dead:

He squeaked and sawed and quickened the tune; the landlord shook the Man in the Moon: ‘It’s after three!’ he said.

With a ping and a pang the fiddle-strings broke! The cow jumped over the Moon, and the little dog laughed to see such fun

And the Saturday dish went off at a run with the silver Sunday spoon.