This burden is said by a correspondent of _Notes and Queries_ to have been first inserted in the old song as a burden by Liston. His song, entitled _The Love-sick Frog_, with an original tune by C. E. H., Esq. (perhaps Charles Edward Horn), and an accompaniment by Thomas Cook, was published by Goulding & Co., Soho Square, in the early part of the nineteenth century (_N. & Q._, I, 458). The burden has been traced back to the _jeu d'esprit_ of 1809 on the installation of Lord Grenville as Chancellor of Oxford, which another correspondent quotes from memory:-- Mister Chinnery then an M. A. of great parts, Sang the praises of Chancellor Grenville. Oh! He pleased all the ladies and tickled their hearts, But then we all know he's a Master of Arts. _With a rowly, powly, gammon and spinach, Heigh ho! says Rowley._ (_N. & Q._, 11, 27.) Another variation of the song of _The Frog and the Mouse_ of about 1800 begins:-- There was a frog lived in a well, _heigho, crowdie_! And a merry mouse in a mill, _with a howdie, crowdie_, etc. (_N. & Q._, 11, 110.) This expression, _heigho, crowdie_, contains a call to the crowd to strike up. The crowd is the oldest kind of British fiddle, which had no neck and only three strings. It is mentioned as a British instrument already by the low Latin poet Fortunatus towards the close of the sixth century: "Chrotta Britannia canat." The instrument is well known to this day in Wales as the _crwth_. The word crowdy occurs also as a verb in one of the numerous nursery rhymes referring to scenes of revelry, at which folk-humour pictured the cat making music:-- Come dance a jig to my granny's pig, With a rowdy, rowdy, dowdy; Come dance a jig to my granny's pig, And pussy cat shall crowdy. (1846, p. 141.) This verse and a number of others go back to the festivities that were connected with Twelfth Night. Some of them preserve expressions in the form of burdens which have no apparent sense; in other rhymes the same expressions have the force of a definite meaning. Probably the verses in which the words retain a meaning have the greater claim to antiquity. Thus among the black-letter ballads is a song[23] which is found also in the nursery collection of 1810 under the designation _The Lady's Song in Leap Year_. [23] _Roxburgh Collection_, IV, 433. Roses are red, _diddle diddle_, lavender's blue, If you will have me, _diddle diddle_, I will have you. Lillies are white, _diddle diddle_, rosemary's green, When you are king, _diddle, diddle_, I will be queen. Call up your men, _diddle, diddle_, set them to work, Some to the plough, _diddle, diddle_, some to the cart. Some to make hay, _diddle, diddle_, some to cut corn, While you and I, _diddle, diddle_, keep the bed warm. (1810, p. 46.)