Lyrics
Old Mother Hubbard Went to the cupboard To get her poor dog a bone. When she got there The cupboard was bare So the poor little dog had none.
#Old Mother Hubbard at a glance
- Country of origin
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- Sung in
- English
- Words by
- Sarah Catherine Martin
- First known
- 1805
- Best for ages
- 2–7
- Mood
- playful, traditional
- Last updated
- 25 July 2026
Meaning and origin
Almost everyone knows this first verse, and almost no one knows there is any more. In fact the bare cupboard is only the opening of a long comic story. Sarah Catherine Martin published The Comic Adventures of Old Mother Hubbard and Her Dog in 1805, and across its many verses the dog gets up to steadily sillier things while Mother Hubbard fusses after him. The single verse we remember is the setup; the rest is the farce.
It was an extraordinary success — one of the publishing sensations of its day. The book sold so fast that rival publishers rushed out pirated editions, sequels and imitations throughout the nineteenth century, and it went on to spawn pantomimes and endless spin-offs. A slightly older version of the rhyme may have been floating about before Martin wrote it down, but hers is the one that conquered the nursery.
What has survived is the sharpest, saddest image of the lot: an old woman, an empty cupboard, and a hopeful dog who gets nothing. Stripped of the comedy that follows, it lands as a tiny picture of going without — which may be exactly why, of all the verses, it is the one children keep.
Common questions
- Who wrote "Old Mother Hubbard"?
- Sarah Catherine Martin (1768–1826) published the first version in 1805, as "The Comic Adventures of Old Mother Hubbard and Her Dog". A slightly older form of the rhyme may have existed before her — one writer recalled it from her own infancy decades earlier — but Martin's is the version that took hold.
- Is the verse we all know the whole rhyme?
- No — it is only the opening. Martin's book runs to many more verses of comic adventures, in which the dog does increasingly absurd things, but the first verse, with the bare cupboard, is the part that everyone remembers.
- Why was "Old Mother Hubbard" so popular?
- It was a publishing sensation. The book sold so well that rival publishers rushed out pirated copies, sequels and imitations all through the 19th century, and it went on to inspire pantomimes and countless spin-offs.
