{"id":13633,"date":"2013-07-02T18:37:04","date_gmt":"2013-07-02T23:37:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/?p=13633"},"modified":"2022-05-29T15:43:15","modified_gmt":"2022-05-29T20:43:15","slug":"little-miss-muffet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/little-miss-muffet\/","title":{"rendered":"Little Miss Muffet"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A map peculiarity reminded me of an old nursery rhyme, probably one of the most famous of them all, and likely familiar to each of us:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Little Miss Muffet
Sat on a tuffet,
Eating her curds and whey;”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I’ll get to the specific reason soon enough. Let me ramble and meander for a little while though, as I tend to to do, before arriving at the final destination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The “Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes” would seem like a proper place to search for an explanation. However, it’s copyright protected on Google Books and I didn’t feel like traipsing down to a physical library to look it up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Theory<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

An amalgam of different online sources, seemingly all deriving from Oxford anyway, traced a possible explanation to one Dr. Thomas Muffet who allegedly wrote the rhyme about his stepdaughter Patience. That’s one theory, anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Black<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Muffet was an entomologist, an insect scientist. So that could have parlayed into the latter part of the rhyme where the spider frightened the little girl. Yes, I understand that a spider is an arachnid not an insect, and a spider scientist is an arachnologist<\/a> not an entomologist. I’m grasping at straws, here. Regardless, the passage first appeared in published form in 1805, in “Songs for the Nursery<\/a>.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There might also be a little intrigue or alternate meanings<\/a> written into the verse:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Is Little Miss Muffet a symbol of sexual harassment or feminine stereotypes? Is this a simply a verse about a young girl eating a meal and being frightened by a bug? Or could these characters represent real people prominent in 16th century England\u2019s history?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Do any of these explanations have anything to do with geography, and does 12MC really care? No, not really. It was a fun tangent while it lasted though. So let’s get back to more pertinent business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Muffet<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Muffet, as a surname<\/a>, “usually originates from the town of Moffat in Annandale, in the former county of Dumfriesshire, Scotland (map<\/a>). If so the derivation is from the Gaelic ‘magh’, meaning a field or plain, and ‘fada’, translating as ‘long’, – the long field.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Moffat.<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It’s not a particularly common surname<\/a> although the variant Moffatt (like the town) would probably sound more familiar. Geographically, I found a small handful of Muffets used as street names and that was about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n