There Was an Old Woman Tossed Up in a Basket Lyrics
Why is an old woman flying seventeen times higher than the moon in a basket? To sweep the cobwebs off the sky, of course. This nonsense rhyme has been a Mother Goose favorite for more than two centuries.
There Was an Old Woman Tossed Up in a Basket
There was an old woman tossed up in a basket
Seventeen times as high as the moon;
Where she was going I couldn't but ask it,
For in her hand she carried a broom.
The second verse
"Old woman, old woman, old woman," quoth I,
"Where are you going to up so high?"
"To brush the cobwebs off the sky!"
"May I go with thee?" "Aye, by-and-by."
Printed from https://nurseryrhymes.co/there-was-an-old-woman-tossed-up-in-a-basket/
- Type
- Mother Goose
- Tune
- Traditional
- Best for ages
- 3 to 7 years
What Does There Was an Old Woman Tossed Up in a Basket Mean?
It is a picture of pure make-believe: a woman carried up into the sky in a basket, holding a broom. The narrator shouts up to ask where she is going, and her answer is wonderfully practical for such a strange trip. She is off to clean the sky.
Old books sometimes illustrate her like a witch on a broomstick, but the rhyme itself never calls her one. She is simply a very tidy old woman.
History and Origin
The rhyme turns up in James Orchard Halliwell's collections of the 1840s and in nearly every big Mother Goose book since. The number changes from book to book: seventeen times as high as the moon in some, nineteen in others, which is typical of rhymes passed on by memory.
Learning Activities
- Sky sweeping: give your child a small brush and act out sweeping cobwebs off the ceiling "sky".
- Question and answer: one person asks the questions in the second verse, the other answers as the old woman.
- Draw it: how high is seventeen times higher than the moon? Draw the basket as far up the page as it will go.