"The Muffin Man" is a traditional nursery rhyme, children's song, or children's game of English origin.
The rhyme was first recorded in a British manuscript circa 1820, that is preserved in the Bodleian Library with lyrics very similar to those used today:
Victorian households had many of their fresh foods delivered, such as muffins, which were delivered door-to-door by a vendor known as a muffin man. The "muffin" in question was the bread item also known as an English muffin, not the typically sweeter U.S. variety of muffin. Drury Lane is a thoroughfare bordering Covent Garden in London.
The rhyme and game appear to have spread to other countries in the mid-nineteenth century, particularly the US and the Netherlands. As with many traditional songs, there are regional variations in wording; for example, another popular English version substitutes "Dorset Lane" for Drury Lane, while in the Dutch version (entitled Zeg ken jij de mosselman), mussels are substituted for muffins, and Scheveningen, the fishermans harbour near the Hague, for Drury Lane.
In Volume 5 of his contemporary account of the London Prize Ring, Boxiana, published in 1829, Pierce Egan writes of an attempted fix (or "cross") of a match scheduled for 18 October 1825, between Reuben Marten and Jonathan Bissel ("Young Gas"). Young Gas refused to take the bribe and one week later identified the person who offered him £200 to throw the fight as a "Mr. Smith, a muffin-baker in Gray's Inn Lane". Young Gas also identified the "gentlemen" who employed the muffin-baker to act as go between, but those gentlemen denied involvement claiming they did not have "the slightest knowledge of the muffin-man".
Urban legend claims that a local baker named Frederick Thomas Lynwood who lived on Drury Lane in London lured children into a dark alley by tying baked goods such as English muffins onto a string in order to murder them. There are no historical records of Lynwood.
"The Muffin Man" is referenced several times in the Shrek series. First mentioned in Shrek (2001), a variant of the lyrics are used in a scene where the villain Lord Farquaad tortures and interrogates Gingy the Gingerbread Man. This scene was recreated in Shrek the Musical (2008–2018) and the fan film Shrek Retold (2018), and was shared on social media in 2022 to mock Amber Heard and her lawyers for a fifteen-minute discussion about muffins during the court case Depp v. Heard.
The Muffin Man appears as a character in the 2004 sequel Shrek 2 and the 2010 Halloween television special Scared Shrekless. He is revealed to be Gingy's "father", being the creator of Gingy; Mungo in Shrek 2; and Sugar in "The Bride of Gingy", the latter of which is a short spoofing Bride of Frankenstein (1935) with the Muffin Man analogous to Dr. Frankenstein.
To download the easy alphanotes sheet music, look here.
Enjoy!
Ohhhhhhhh…
Do you know the muffin man,
the muffin man, the muffin man?
Do you know the muffin man,
who lives on Drury Lane?
Yes, I know the muffin man,
the muffin man, the muffin man.
Yes, I know the muffin man,
who lives on Drury Lane.
The ice cream man is coming!
Ohhhhhhhhh…
Do you know the ice cream man,
the ice cream man, the ice cream man?
Do you know the ice cream man,
who lives on Drury Lane?
Yes, I know the ice cream man,
the ice cream man, the ice cream man.
Yes, I know the ice cream man,
who lives on Drury Lane.
Ohhhhhhhhhh…
Do you know the fruit stand man,
the fruit stand man, the fruit stand man?
Do you know the fruit stand man,
who lives on Drury Lane?
Yes, I know the fruit stand man,
the fruit stand man, the fruit stand man.
Yes, I know the fruit stand man,
who lives on Drury Lane.
Ohhhhhhhhhh….
Do you know the muffin man,
the muffin man, the muffin man?
Do you know the muffin man,
who lives on Drury Lane?
Yes, I know the muffin man,
the muffin man, the muffin man.
Yes, I know the muffin man,
who lives on Drury Lane.
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