Some references suggest it dates back in some form a thousand or more years: in early medieval illuminated manuscripts a cat playing a fiddle was a popular image.

[2] Another possible reference is in Alexander Montgomerie's The Cherry and the Slae from 1597: But since you think't an easy thing To mount above the moon, Of your own fiddle take a spring And dance when you have done.

[2] In L. Frank Baum's "Mother Goose in Prose", the rhyme was written by a farm boy named Bobby who had just seen the cat running around with his fiddle clung to her tail, the cow jumping over the moon's reflection in the waters of a brook, the dog running around and barking with excitement, and the dish and the spoon from his supper sliding into the brook.

James Orchard Halliwell's suggestion that it was a corruption of an ancient Greek chorus was probably passed to him as a hoax by George Burges.

[2][8][9] Other alleged bases for the rhyme include the Egyptian goddess Hathor, the Hebrew Flight from Egypt, or even the relationships of Elizabeth, Lady Katherine Grey, with the Earls of Hertford and Leicester.