Nursery Rhyme Series: Three Blind Mice (Print)

Three blind mice. Three blind mice.
See how they run. See how they run.
They all ran after the farmer’s wife,
Who cut off their tails with a carving knife,
Did you ever see such a thing in your life,
As three blind mice?

There is speculation that  this refers to Mary Tudor ‘Bloody Mary’ blinding and executing three Protestant bishops, Ridley, Latimer and Cranmer, but they were burned at the stake, not blinded. It could be that their ‘blindness’ refers to their refusal to embrace Catholicism, but the whole explanation is a bit tenuous as the mice in the rhyme were maimed but not killed, and the first known date of publication of Three Blind Mice is 1609, well after Queen Mary’s death.

A4 digital print