Fiddle-de-dee Lyrics
A fly and a bumblebee get married, and everyone sings fiddle-de-dee. It is one of the shortest and silliest wedding stories in the nursery.
Fiddle-de-dee
Fiddle-de-dee, fiddle-de-dee,
The fly shall marry the humble-bee.
They went to the church, and married was she,
The fly has married the humble-bee.
Printed from https://nurseryrhymes.co/fiddle-de-dee/
- Type
- Animal Rhymes
- Tune
- Spoken or sung
- Best for ages
- 2 to 6 years
What Does Fiddle-de-dee Mean?
A humble-bee is an old name for a bumblebee. The fly marries the bee in church, which makes no sense at all, and that is the whole joke. Fiddle-de-dee was an old exclamation meaning nonsense, so the first line tells you exactly what kind of rhyme this is.
History and Origin
James Orchard Halliwell printed the rhyme in The Nursery Rhymes of England in the 1840s. Animal weddings are a favorite subject of old rhymes and songs, from the owl and the pussycat to the frog who went a-courting, because they let children imagine animals behaving like people.
Learning Activities
- Bug wedding: draw the fly and the bee in their wedding clothes.
- Who else? invent other unlikely couples: a snail and a sparrow, a mouse and a moth.
- Bee or fly: look at pictures of each and count their wings and legs.