# Origin of, "I know an old lady who swallowed a fly."
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-i-know-an-old-lady-who-swallowed-a-fly/295019
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [March 17, 2005, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-i-know-an-old-lady-who-swallowed-a-fly/295019 "2005-03-17T18:23:00Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Askia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askia)
#### Post date: [March 17, 2005, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-i-know-an-old-lady-who-swallowed-a-fly/295019/1 "2005-03-17T18:23:00Z")
Authorship, country of origin, approximate age of the ditty and speculation of what would be printed on the old lady’s death certificate. My inadequate research skills are ill-suited to the task.
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### Author:  [@mittu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mittu)
#### Post date: [March 17, 2005, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-i-know-an-old-lady-who-swallowed-a-fly/295019/2 "2005-03-17T18:34:20Z")
I’m not 100% sure about this but the easliest reference I can find to the song is from the 1950’s recorded by a folk singer named “Burl Ives”. Like I said i’m not certain he wrote it or was the first to record it but it’s a start!!
As for the cause of death I would venture a guess at “Death by mis-adventure” which is a fancy way of saying someone died-after-doing-something-incredibly-stupid-and-did-the-gene-pool-a-favour 🙂
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### Author:  [@chukhung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chukhung)
#### Post date: [March 17, 2005, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-i-know-an-old-lady-who-swallowed-a-fly/295019/3 "2005-03-17T18:35:45Z")
This [page](http://cjtm.icaap.org/content/21/v21art4.html) says
> [@](#):
>
> The felicity of this marriage might have been read in the Burl Ives 1953 hit “I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly,” a children’s song created by Canadian Alan Mills on the basis of a poem credited to an Englishwoman named Rose Bonne