Rub-a-dub-dub
Three men in a tub,
And who do you think they be?
The butcher, the baker,
The candlestick maker,
They all jumped out of a rotten potato!
Turn 'em out knaves all three.
A variation of this rhyme is...
Rub-a-dub-dub
Three men in a tub,
And how do you think they got there?
The butcher, the baker,
The candlestick maker,
They all jumped out of a rotten potato!
T'was enough to make a man stare.
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Copyright ©2009 by Lisa Yannucci. All rights reserved.
A History of Nursery Rhymes (1899) by Percy B. Green has the first line as "Hub-a-dub dub".
Here's the version from The Little Mother Goose (1912), illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith:
Hub a Dub, Dub
Hub a dub, dub,
Three men in a tub;
The butcher, the baker,
The candlestick maker;
All jumped out of an Irish potato.
The illustration can be found in The Big Book of Nursery Rhymes (circa 1920) edited by Walter Jerrold (1865 - 1929) and illustrated by Charles Robinson (with some graphical editing of the image above by Lisa Yannucci).