There was an old lady - Burl Ives

"There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly" is what is called a cumulative song, a repetitive work with connected lines of poetry or song. It is also a children's nursery rhyme and a nonsensical song. It dates from at least the 19th century and is documented in Dorothy B. King's 1946 book Happy Recollections. Burl Ives' version is the most famous. It is also known as I Know an Old Lady or There Was an Old Woman or I Know an Old Woman. Poor Mrs Somebody is another title. The song tells the nonsensical story of an old woman who swallows increasingly large animals, each to catch the previous animal, but (spoiler alert) dies after swallowing a horse. There are many variations of phrasing in the lyrics, especially for the description of swallowing each animal.

The earliest reference to a song about a woman who swallowed a fly goes back to 1872. It credits the lyrics to Frank W. Green and the music to Alfred Lee. It seems to have been a Music Hall hit in London. Audiences loved it and laughed out loud. In 1957 an American published three versions of the story from different parts of the USA.

The origins of the song are uncertain. It's possible it was inspired by an anecdote about London surgeon John Abernethy which was widely reported on his death in 1831. A young woman came to seek medical help after swallowing a spider. "Mr Abernethy dextrously caught a blue-bottle fly as it fled by him, and told the patient to put it in her mouth and if she spit it out in a few moments the spider would come out with it." By the start of the 20th century, the story had mutated. According to the Glasgow Observer in the "celebrated case", Abernethy suggested he should send a spider down into her lungs to catch the fly. She "declared that she felt the spider walking down her throat when Abernethy was only tickling it with a feather, and declared herself completely cured when Abernethy showed her both fly and spider in a test tube." Burl Ives recorded his version in 1953 and it was released on the Brunswick label. The credited writers are Rose Bonne (lyrics) and Alan Mills (music). They had copyrighted their version the year before. Ives' rendition is on his album, Folk Songs, Dramatic and Humorous also from 1953. According to the album liner notes, the song was "derived from an old ballad", rewritten by Mills, and passed to Ives by Edith Fowke of CBC Radio. The final line cleverly stops things dead (literally) and is very funny.