"Hey Diddle Diddle" is an English nursery rhyme. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19478.
Illustration by William Wallace Denslow
In this Randolph Caldecott rendition, a dish, spoon, and other utensils are anthropomorphized while a cat in a red jacket holds a fiddle in the manner of a string bass.
A nursery rhyme is a traditional poem or song for children in Britain and many other countries, but usage of the term dates only from the late 18th/early 19th century. The term Mother Goose rhymes is interchangeable with nursery rhymes.
Illustration of "Hey Diddle Diddle", a well-known nursery rhyme
Popular Nursery Tales and Rhymes, Warner & Routledge, London, c. 1859
"Baa, Baa, Black Sheep", from a 1901 illustration by William Wallace Denslow