Hey diddle diddle … and the cat ran away with the ‘shrooms!

Hey diddle diddle!

Today I look back at some of the nursery rhymes I heard, now a half-century past, and wonder if they had any meaning or whether they were just random thoughts put together, of the kind I do and as my Dad did before me.

The Wikipedia offers some explanations into possible origins of “Hey Diddle Diddle.” They are interesting, or at least some are but they do not deserve repeating here, especially when one may read them as I have linked.

The cat and the fiddle. The cow jumped over the moon.

One thinks of fiddles and their strings made for many years before synthetics with “catgut.” This material came from various animal intestines such as sheep, cattle, horses but probably not from cats. As for cows and the moon, long has a fancy existed that the moon was made from cheese and dairy cattle being a major source of cheese, one can understand a cow being curious as to the origin of that big old bright moon at night, lit up in all its splendor in an anything-but glorious color which doesn’t resemble most cheese at all.

The little dog laughed to see such sport.

Thus we have us a laughing dog, which is laughing, presumably, at a cat, a fiddle, and a cow jumping over the moon because its mother lode of cheese might just reside there. I’ve never actually seen a dog laugh. I’ve seen them smile plenty of times. Well, maybe once I did, let’s not talk about that. Then again, I’ve never really seen a cow hurdle the moon either.

And the dish ran away with the spoon.

Why? Because the fork conspired with the knife to drown those now runaways in a vat of soapy water. Die you dirty little bastards! I’ve felt that way about silverware especially when even an electric dishwasher couldn’t clean them.

My best guess is hallucinogens. These rhymes purportedly came from Merry ole England, but when they surfaced is anyone’s guess. Well, not anyone but perhaps some scholar could make some sense of it. Just what got these fellows to start seeing cats and fiddles, cows jumping over the moon and a dish on the lamb with a spoon makes me think think the author ingested some kind of mushroom. Maybe it’s not the psilocybin found mostly in tropical and subtropical areas, including the south and southwest United States. But just think of what those long-ago cows might have ate to help grow something, well, downright wild.

Of course, the explanation may also be completely innocent. Someone made some rap up which was silly to tell their little one. Or else, someone who was tripping like a big dog in PetSmart made something up which was silly to tell their little one.