Tweedledum and Tweedledee

views updated May 11 2018

Tweedledum and Tweedledee originally names applied to the composers Bononcini (1670–1747) and Handel, in a 1725 satire by John Byrom (1692–1763), ‘Strange all this difference should be, 'Twixt Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee.’

The nursery rhyme featuring Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and their agreement to ‘have a battle’, is recorded from the early 19th century, and they were later developed as two identical characters in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass (1872).

More From encyclopedia.com