Over The Moon
Q.
You’re happy, you’re thrilled, you’re ‘over the moon.’ What’s the origin of this space-hurtling idiom?
.
A.
The idea that happiness = ‘over the moon’ is rooted in the much-chanted ‘Hey Diddle Diddle’ Mother Goose nursery rhyme…
Hey Diddle, Diddle
Hey, diddle, diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon;
The little dog laughed,
To see such sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.
It’s a ditty that is said to stretch back to at least the 1700s. In some versions, the dish runs ‘after’, not ‘away with,’ the spoon. It’s no small difference: is this a rom-com or a horror movie?
We see a particularly famous version of the Diddle, with associated melody, in James William Elliott’s 1872 ‘National Nursery Rhymes And Nursery Songs’…
.
.
Beyond the happy moon-jumping cow: what does the ‘Hey Diddle, Diddle’ rhyme actually mean? Who’s the cat, who’s the fiddle, and why must they diddle?
That’s a question you might not want to bring up late night in an 1800s tavern. Wild theories ran the gamut from Ancient Egyptian constellation hijinks to Queen Elizabeth I fiddle-dancing around her lovestruck Earls. Other grogged-up debaters insisted that ‘the cat and the fiddle’ was a veiled reference to the long-suffering first wife of the ever-diddling Henry VIII: Catherine (Katherine) of Aragon, or ‘Catherine la Fidèle.’
After hearing one too many Hey Diddle Diddle theories, JRR Tolkien came up with his own fantastical backstory in the 1922 poem: The Cat and the Fiddle. A nursery rhyme untimed and its scandalous secret unlocked.
.
.
‘… The cat then suddenly changed the tune;
The dog began to roar;
The horses stood upon their heads;
The guests all bounded upon their beds
And danced upon the floor.
The cat broke all his fiddle strings;
The cow jumped over the Moon;
The little dog laughed to see such fun;
In the middle the Sunday dish did run
Away with the Sunday spoon…’
.
Tolkien assigned a version of this enough already poem – ‘The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late’ – to the pen of Bilbo Baggins and the singing voice of Frodo in ‘Lord Of The Rings.’ Here we see Bofur singing an excerpt in the Extended Edition of the 2012 ‘Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.’
.
.
Header Art: Getty Images
