There Was an Old Woman Who Lived Under a Hill


"There was an old woman lived under a hill" is a nursery rhyme which dates back to at least its first known printing in 1714. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 797.

Lyrics

Origins and development

In 1714 these lines:
appeared as part of a catch in The Academy of Complements. In 1744 these lines appeared by themselves in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, the first extant collection of nursery rhymes. One eighteenth-century editor, possibly Oliver Goldsmith, added a note: "This is a self evident Proposition which is the very Essence of Truth. 'She lived under the hill, and if she is not gone she lives there still', Nobody will presume to contradict this."
The 1810 edition of Gammer Gurton's Garland included a variant
Edgar, in Shakespeare's King Lear, appears to refer to this version when he says "Pillycock sat on Pillycock hill," which indicates that the rhyme was known as early as the first decade of the seventeenth century. The final lines first appeared in print c. 1843.