Three Blind Mice

Three Blind Mice, Charles Folkard, 1927 (click image for larger version)

'Three blind mice, three blind mice,
See how they run, see how they run,
They all ran after the farmer's wife,
Who cut off their tails with a carving knife,
Did you ever see such a thing in your life,
As three blind mice?'

Listen to Three Blind Mice.
(Duration: 33 seconds)

This nursery rhyme is thought to refer to the Catholic Queen Mary I (1516-1558) and her violent persecution of Protestants in the 16th century. During Mary’s reign from 1553 until her death in 1558, over 300 Protestants were burned at the stake. Consequently she was nicknamed ‘Bloody Mary’.

Mary is referred to in the rhyme as the ‘farmer’s wife’ perhaps because her husband, Prince Phillip of Spain owned a lot of land and estates. The ‘three blind mice’ are thought to symbolise the Protestant martyrs Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer and Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cramner, who served under Mary’s father Henry VIII. These three men were burnt at the stake outside Balliol College in Oxford under Mary’s orders in October 1555.