Is there any allegorical meaning to the nursery rhyme 'Three Blind Mice'?

Lottie1001

One theory is that it refers to Queen Mary I and protestant bishops. http://www.rhymes.org.uk/three_blind_mice.htm Apr 14 12, 4:58 PM

timence

Also, the reference to 'farmer's wife' supposedly refers to the massive estates she and her husband (Philip of Spain) owned. http://www.rotherham-ghosts.com/grimnurseryrhymes.htm Apr 14 12, 10:04 PM

Baloo55th

One of the earliest recorded versions is attributed to Thomas Ravenscroft and was published in 1609 - quite a time after Mary. It goes: "Three Blinde Mice, Three Blinde Mice, Dame Iulian, Dame Iulian, the Miller and his merry olde Wife, she scrapte her tripe licke thou the knife". (Julian was used then as a female name as in Julian of Norwich - it became exclusively male later.) I've never heard of the farmer's wife being blind - any evidence, please? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Blind_Mice is a good discussion, including the ambiguity of whether the mice ran after her before or after their tails were chopped off. It has all the ring of something political from the days when satire was the thing, not exposure. Meanings could be lost quite quickly - even nowadays with the greater recording of news etc, if a song written now containing the line 'the dog rode on the roof' were looked at in a couple of hundred years time, who would easily work out what it referred to? Apr 15 12, 4:48 AM