There Was an Old Woman Who Lived Under a Hill

The earliest known appearance of "There Was an Old Woman Who Lived Under a Hill" was in 1714, in a collection called The Academy of Complements, where it was presented as part of a catch song, a type of round sung by adults. By 1744, it was included in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, which is considered the first known collection of nursery rhymes, and its structure is even referenced in Shakespeare's King Lear (1606) by the character Edgar, suggesting that some form of the rhyme's concept existed even earlier. The original couplet—"There was an old woman, Liv'd under a hill, And if she ben't gone, She lives there still"—was essentially a tautology, with humor lying in its circular logic. Over time, particularly by the 19th century, Victorian editors expanded and softened the rhyme, adding moralistic elements such as "Baked apples she sold, and cranberry pies, And she's the old woman that never told lies," shifting the meaning from a simple logical observation to a portrayal of an honest and homely figure emphasizing truthfulness and industriousness for children. The phrase "under the hill" itself carried folkloric weight in British tradition, often associated with hidden folk and fairies living underground.