The Mystery Behind Little Miss Muffet and Her “Tuffet”

When it comes to classic nursery rhymes, “Little Miss Muffet” is right up there with “Humpty Dumpty” and “The Itsy Bitsy Spider.” Here are answers to all your burning questions about the history of the character and more.

“Little Miss Muffet”: The Full Poem
Who Was the Real-Life Little Miss Muffet?
Little Miss Muffet’s Many Relatives
What Are Curds and Whey?
What’s a Tuffet?

“Little Miss Muffet”: The Full Poem

illustration of a little girl in a hat sitting and eating on a patch of grass with the nursery rhyme "Little Miss Muffet" — A 19th-century version of "Little Miss Muffet" illustrated by Kate Greenaway. | Culture Club/GettyImages

But first, here’s a refresher on the nursery rhyme itself. Slight variations in the wording are common (as evidenced in the image above). The edition below is from the Poetry Foundation.

“Little Miss Muffet”
“Little Miss Muffet Sat on a tuffet, Eating her curds and whey; Along came a spider, Who sat down beside her, And frightened Miss Muffet away.

Who Was the Real-Life Little Miss Muffet?

The most common theory claims that Little Miss Muffet was Patience Muffet, daughter of Thomas Muffet, a British physician who also studied insects and spiders. But there’s nothing to support it beyond the name and Muffet’s interest in spiders. Moreover, Muffet (whose surname is also spelled Moffett and Moufet) died in 1604, and the earliest known reference to the nursery rhyme is from 1805.

That said, nursery rhymes are an oral tradition, and it’s often hard to tell how long a given one had existed before it got written down. Not to mention that people continued to read Muffet’s works long after he died: His best-known research on spiders wasn’t even published until 1634 [PDF].

Another theory posits that Little Miss Muffet was Mary, Queen of Scots. The spider is said to represent Protestant John Knox, a Scottish Reformation leader who protested Mary’s Roman Catholic reign. But this is even more speculative than the Patience Muffet theory.

black and white illustration of a man standing over a woman sitting down, exasperated as he lectures her — An illustration from 'Wycliffe to Wesley; Heroes and Martyrs of the Church in Britain' (1885) by Gregory J. Robinson. | whitemay/GettyImages

Most likely, Little Miss Muffet was just a character invented to fit a trend already established in other rhymes: A person, usually “Little [insert name],” is sitting and doing an activity, and then something happens.

Little Miss Muffet’s Many Relatives

Britain has a long history of game-type dances that involve a group of boys and girls choosing dance partners as they sing a song. The exact verses vary widely from region to region, but here are a few examples of the opening lines:

Variations of an Old British Folk Dancing Game
“Little Sally Waters sitting in the sun Crying and weeping for her young man”
“Little Polly Sanders sits on the sand, Weeping and crying for her young man”
“Little Alice Sander sat upon a cinder, Weeping and crying for her young man”

The character then selects a suitable beau; many versions of the song even see them married with children. In her 1906 book Comparative Studies in Nursery Rhymes, scholar Lina Eckenstein suggested that “Little Miss Muffet” and similar poems may have arisen as more kid-friendly versions of these so-called “marriage games.” Instead of kissing boys and having babies, Little Miss Muffet innocently snacks away until a spider interrupts her peace. Here’s a handful of other rhymes in this vein:

Nursery Rhymes Like “Little Miss Muffet”
“Little Molly Flinders sat among the cinders, Warming her pretty toes; Her mother came and caught her, and scolded her little daughter, For spoiling her nice new clothes.”
“Little Poll Parrot sat in his garret, Eating toast and tea; A little brown mouse jumped into the house, And stole it all away.”
“Little Tom Tacket sits upon his cracket, Half a yard of cloth will make him a jacket, Make him a jacket and breeches to the knee, And if you will not have him, you may let him be.”

And then there’s “Little Miss Mopsey” who “sat in the shopsey” and “Little Mary Ester” who “sat upon a tester.” Both, like Little Miss Muffet, were eating curds and whey when a spider frightened them away. (A garret is an attic; a cracket is a low stool; and tester in this context may have referred to part of a canopy bed or the bed itself.)

It’s also worth pointing out that the character Little Jack Horner was mentioned in print way back in 1665—suggesting that some version of his poem was being recited aloud even before then. The full nursery rhyme, in which Jack sits in a corner eating Christmas pie, entered the written record in the 1700s.

In short, the timeline is cloudy: We don’t know which song or nursery rhyme came first or how directly any of them inspired others.

What Are Curds and Whey?

Curds and whey are milk byproducts. When milk goes sour—either accidentally or because you’re purposely acidifying it to make cheese—it turns into solid lumps known as curds and a protein-heavy liquid known as whey. Though the two elements are often separated, “curds and whey” used to be a dish of its own. How it was made depends on the recipe, but you basically curdled milk and then sweetened it. One 1851 recipe book for “delicious summer drinks” featured it right between ice water and lemonade. But most sources, “Little Miss Muffet” among them, present it as something you eat rather than drink.

What’s a Tuffet?

girl in bonnet and long white dress holds a bowl and tips over a three-legged stool with a spider on it — An illustration by Kate Greenaway from 1900's 'The April Baby's Book of Tunes.' | Wikimedia Commons // Public Domain

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, tuffet is a variant of tuft, which could refer to a bunch of any small, flexible material (like hair), a clump of plant matter growing from a shared source (herbs, flowers, grass, etc.), or a small group of trees or shrubs. The term was also at least occasionally used to mean “grassy hillock.” Though this last sense was rare, it’s generally understood as the best fit for Little Miss Muffet’s story.

So why is she so often depicted sitting on a footstool? The OED thinks it might be a simple case of mistaken identity: The word buffet was used for a footstool (sometimes a three-legged stool, specifically) into the 19th century, so people may have unwittingly substituted tuffet for that more familiar term. Some versions of the poem do literally say that Little Miss Muffet sat on a buffet.

Even if it began in error, tuffet is widely enough interpreted as “stool” or “low seat” that dictionaries have now validated the definition. It’s one of many English language mistakes that stuck.