Nursery Rhymes and Children's Songs

Three Blind Mice - Chords, Lyrics and Origins

Origins

The entertaining story about the origin of 'Three Blind Mice' is that the 'blind mice' were three protestant martyrs - bishops Ridley, Latimer and Cranmer - who were burned at the stake for their beliefs by Queen Mary I of England, who was of course a catholic. She and her husband, Philip of Spain, had large estates: thus she was a "farmer's wife". The rather obvious objection to this is that the three unfortunate gentlemen were not mice, and were not blinded. Although the story is entertaining, I'm not sure there is any evidence for it. What we can say is that a variant (or perhaps the original version) of the rhyme was first published in 1609 in a book by Thomas Ravenscroft. This is quite some time after Mary I's death in 1558.

acousticmusicarchive · Three Blind Mice

Chords

D        A      D
Three blind mice,

D        A      D
Three blind mice,

D     A             D
See how they run,

D     A             D
See how they run,

         D    A           D
They all ran after the farmer's wife

         D    A                D
Who cut off their tails with a carving knife.

        D       A               D
Did ever you see such a thing in your life

     D    A      D
As three blind mice?

Lyrics

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?