"There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly" is a children's rhyme and nonsense song of a kind known as cumulative. Alternative titles include "There Was an Old Lady", "I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly", "There Was an Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly" and "I Know an Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly". An early documentation of the story appears in English author Dorothy B. King's 1946 book Happy Recollections.
The song tells the nonsensical story of an old woman who swallows increasingly large...
