Muffin man

“Do you know the Muffin man

The Muffin man, the Muffin man

Oh, do you know the Muffin man

Who lives on Drury Lane?

Oh yes, we know the Muffin man

The Muffin man, the Muffin man

Oh yes, we know the Muffin man

Who lives on Drury Lane?

Oh, we all know the Muffin man

The Muffin Man, the Muffin man

Oh, we all know the Muffin man

Who lives on Drury Lane?”

This well known nursery rhyme was sang in the elementary school hallways, we all thought it was about a muffin man who made muffins and everyone was excited to see him. You could not be more wrong! Surprise! He was in fact a serial killer and not just any serial killer, he murdered children. Now, you’re thinking that’s ironic considering that is a children’s song and he murdered them? Yikes, this took a dark turn very quickly.

How did I find this out? I was watching TikTok… not everything you hear on TikTok is true. I obviously had to do more digging. Down the rabbit hole I went. Back in the early 1800’s a muffin man was a delivery person who would go to each house and deliver muffins. That is a little bit obvious, but that’s how things worked. Anyways and this particular man the one from the nursery rhyme would tie a string of baked goods in a dark alley and murder them. However, it seems this person did not actually exist, so this is just a simple nursery rhyme and not about a murderer. Good news!! Fredrick Thomas Lynwood didn’t actually exist and he was the “supposed” killer. He was also known as “The Drury Lane Dicer” but again this guy never existed. It was just plain old urban legend, but may have I ruined this song forever for you because now you might just think about this every time your child sings it or you hear it in the streets. Remember, this is an urban legend and the person never existed. How come this song exists then? And why were people suspecting that it was about a serial killer?

Who knows? The song dates back to way back when and there’s no original record of it, but in one corner of the internet it was meant for a silly stage song and nothing more. However, the lyrics were different and most likely not about a muffin man. This is what happens to early literature the original is lost and/or changed to where it is not recognized or relevant and things change over the years. A perfect example is even our modern day songs the original “Numa, Numa” was not in English and then Rihanna transformed it into English but millennials know that she was not the original singer or writer. The same thing goes with poetry or anything that was written centuries before ours. A lot of things also get lost in translation. For example Beowulf had important character names meaning something and when it was translated a lot of meanings got lost. This is a very common thing to happen when it comes to early literature, so it’s perfectly reasonable for some people to believe the legend of the muffin man to be true. In short do not believe everything TikTok tells you. You might hear something and you cannot believe it all. Take this as a lesson for yourselves.

Do you know of any other legends that are said to be true? Feel free to tell me in the comments below! Did you like this story? Feel free to subscribe!