Lucy Locket

"Lucy Locket" is an English language nursery rhyme. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19536.

Lyrics

Common modern versions include:

Another version

Tune

The song shares its tune with "Yankee Doodle" which emerged in North America in the mid-eighteenth century, but it is not clear which set of lyrics emerged first.

Origins and meaning

The rhyme was first recorded by James Orchard Halliwell in 1842, but there is evidence that it was popular in Britain and America at least in the early nineteenth century.

Various persons have been identified with Lucy Locket and Kitty Fisher. Halliwell suggested that they were "two celebrated courtesans of the time of Charles II," but no supportive evidence has been found. The name Lucy Locket was used by John Gay in Beggar's Opera (1728), but may have already have been proverbial. Kitty Fisher may have been Catherine Marie Fischer (d. 1767) a British courtesan who was the subject of three unfinished portraits by Joshua Reynolds and a number of songs, including an air recorded in Thompson's Country Dances (1760).