Tweedledum and Tweedledee are fictional characters in an English language nursery rhyme and in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, and Alice in Wonderland. Their names may have originally come from an epigram written by poet John Byrom. The nursery rhyme has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19800.
Common versions of the nursery rhyme include:
The words "Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee" make their first appearance in print in "one of the most c...
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Tweedledum and Tweedledee are fictional characters in an English language nursery rhyme and in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, and Alice in Wonderland. Their names may have originally come from an epigram written by poet John Byrom. The nursery rhyme has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19800.
Common versions of the nursery rhyme include:
The words "Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee" make their first appearance in print in "one of the most celebrated and most frequently quoted (and sometimes misquoted) epigrams", satirising the disagreements between George Frideric Handel and Giovanni Battista Bononcini, written by John Byrom (1692–1763):
Although Byrom is clearly the author of the epigram, the last two lines have also been attributed to Johnathan Swift and Alexander Pope. Although the rhyme in its familiar form was not printed until around 1805, when it appeared in Original Ditties for the Nursery, it is possible that Byrom was drawing on an existing rhyme.
The characters are...
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