Little Miss Muffet is an English nursery rhyme. It was first recorded in print in Songs for the Nursery in 1805. In most versions of the rhyme it is said as: “Little Miss Muffet / Sat on a tuffet, / Eating her curds and whey; / There came a big spider, / Who sat down beside her / And frightened Miss Muffet away.”
History with the Macy's Parade[]
Little Miss Muffet first appeared in the inaugural Macy’s Christmas Parade in 1924. The float was one of several in the lineup based on nursery rhyme stories—others included the Old Woman Who Lived In a Shoe and Three Men In a Tub.
The Little Miss Muffet float, faithful to the rhyme, portrayed Miss Muffet sitting on a tuffet (in this case, a grassy hillock) enjoying her feast of curds and whey. From a tree she sat under, the spider sat beside her though it did not scare Miss Muffet away. Pulled by horses with shiny coats, illustrations of roosters, dogs, and pigs danced across the side of the float.
In 1958, a Little Miss Muffet push float debuted alongside others depicting nursery rhyme greats. In a flowery garden tended to with care, Little Miss Muffet sat in a rocking chair. With a white picket fence and a tall, blooming tree, even the descent of a spider could not get her to flee. Six appearances is what the float made before retiring after the 1963 Parade.
Little Miss Muffet later appeared on the Magical World of Mother Goose falloon from 1991 through 1998 as a costumed character. She appeared sporadically as a special character (alongside her Mother Goose friends) in both the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and the Macy’s Holiday Parade throughout the 2000s and 2010s. The costume last saw use in the Springtime Clowns unit in 2019.