Tweedledum and Tweedledee

Tweedledum and Tweedledee are characters in an English nursery rhyme and in Lewis Carroll's 1871 book Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. Their names may have originally come from an epigram written by poet John Byrom. The nursery rhyme has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19800. The names have since become synonymous in western popular culture slang for any two people whose appearances and actions are identical.

Lyrics

Common versions of the nursery rhyme include:

Tweedledum and Tweedledee

Agreed to have a battle;

For Tweedledum said Tweedledee

Had spoiled his nice new rattle.

Just then flew down a monstrous crow,

As black as a tar-barrel;

Which frightened both the heroes so,

They quite forgot their quarrel.

Origins

The words "Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum" make their first appearance in print as names applied to the composers George Frideric Handel and Giovanni Bononcini in "one of the most celebrated and most frequently quoted (and sometimes misquoted) epigrams", satirising disagreements between Handel and Bononcini, written by John Byrom (1692–1763): in his satire, from 1725.

Some say, compar'd to Bononcini

That Mynheer Handel's but a Ninny

Others aver, that he to Handel

Is scarcely fit to hold a Candle

Strange all this Difference should be

'Twixt Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee!

Although Byrom is clearly the author of the epigram, the last two lines have also been attributed to Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope. While the familiar form of the rhyme was first printed in Original Ditties for the Nursery (c.