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Hey Diddle Diddle is a nursery rhyme.

In this rendition, a dish, spoon, and other utensils are anthropomorphized while a cat in a red jacket holds a fiddle in the manner of a string bass.

William Wallace Denslow's illustrations for Hey Diddle Diddle, from a 1901 edition of Mother Goose

Hey diddle diddle,

The cat and the fiddle,

The cow jumped over the moon,

The little dog laughed to see such fun,

And the dish ran away with the spoon.

An alternate version of this nursery rhyme is....

Hey diddle, diddle,

The cat and the fiddle,

The cow jumped over the moon;

The little dog laughed to see such sport,

And the dish ran after the spoon.

or

Hey diddle diddle,

The cat and the fiddle,

The cow jumped over the moon;

The little dog laughed to see such a sight,

And the dish ran away with the spoon.

It is likely that this poem is a satire of a scandal during the time of Queen Elizabeth I. The cat is Elizabeth I and the dog is Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, whom she once referred to as her 'lap dog'. It is also speculated that the 'dish' is a server at the royal court, whereas the 'spoon' refers to a taste-tester.

It is also refering to queen elizabeth the cat ,who fiddled with her ministers like mice. the dog, her lap dog. and the dish, serving lady who was in love with the spoon, tester and they ran away together. elizabeth had them put in the tower.

There has also been manipulations to suit individual, i.e. Hey diddle diddle, The Arab had a fiddle, The cow slapped over his moon, The little dog laughed to see such fun, And the dish ran away with the spoon.

"Hey Diddle Diddle" is more than just rhyming words. In fact, they are a lesson in astronomy. All, or nearly all "characters' in Hey Diddle Diddle are constellations visible only in the April night sky.

Hey diddle diddle, the Cat (Leo the Lion) and the Fiddle (Lyra), the Cow (Taurus The Bull) jumped over The Moon (The Moon), Little Dog (Canis Minor) laughed to see such sport, and Thr Dish (Crater--a dish shaped constellation) ran away with The Spoon (The Big Dipper, AKA Ursa Major).

It just so happens that April is the only month when all of these constellations can be seen in the night sky, and this was a signal to the early Europeans, mainly the English, that it was time to plant the crops.

Cow jumps spoon, according to Denslow

J. R. R. Tolkien invented (by back formation) the imagined original ditty that is recorded in the simplified nursery rhyme. The title of this version as given in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil is "The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late"; it also appears in The Fellowship of the Ring. He also wrote a companion poem titled "The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon." This is included in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.

In the Broadway musical Rent, Maureen Johnson (originally played by Idina Menzel) protests the destruction of a housing lot for the building of a cyber-arts studio. She uses imagery from this nursery rhyme in her protests, chronicling a twisted dream version of the rhyme in the number "Over the Moon".

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