The Muffin Man

The rhyme was first recorded in a British manuscript circa 1820, that is preserved in the Bodleian Library with lyrics very similar to those used today: Do you know the muffin man?

[3] In Volume 5 of his contemporary account of the London Prize Ring, Boxiana, published in 1829, Pierce Egan writes of an attempted fix (or "cross") of a match scheduled for 18 October 1825, between Reuben Marten and Jonathan Bissel ("Young Gas").

Young Gas refused to take the bribe and one week later identified the person who offered him £200 to throw the fight as a "Mr. Smith, a muffin-baker in Gray's Inn Lane".

Urban legend claims that a local baker named Frederick Thomas Lynwood who lived on Drury Lane in London lured children into a dark alley by tying baked goods such as English muffins onto a string in order to murder them.

4, and so on round the room, the same question and answer being repeated, the chorus only varied by the addition of one more number each time.

First mentioned in Shrek (2001), a variant of the lyrics are used in a scene where the villain Lord Farquaad tortures and interrogates Gingy the Gingerbread Man.

[6][7] The Muffin Man appears as a character in the 2004 sequel Shrek 2 and the 2010 Halloween television special Scared Shrekless.