Itsy Bitsy Spider


"Itsy Bitsy Spider" is a popular nursery rhyme and fingerplay that describes the adventures of a spider as it ascends, descends, and reascends the downspout or "waterspout" of a gutter system. It is usually accompanied by a sequence of gestures that mimic the words of the song. Its Roud Folk Song Index number is 11586.

Lyrics

A commonly used version uses these words and gestures:
Other versions exist.

Recordings

The popular nursery rhyme has been covered and sampled a number of times.

Cinema

In the Jordan Peele film Us the young girl, Adelaide Wilson, starts whistling "Itsy Bitsy Spider" when she is down in the funhouse, in front of the hall of mirrors. Her doppelgänger, Red, starts whistling the same song, right before they see each other for the first time. All the doppelgängers have been underground waiting for their opportunity to go above ground, or "up the waterspout", and Red is the one that leads them "up the waterspout".
It is one of the main musical themes in the 2006 horror movie Séance.
It was referred in two Spider-Man movies: in 2002, by Willem Dafoe as Green Goblin in Spider-Man and in 2014 by Jamie Foxx as Electro in The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

Television

sang the rhyme in the tenth episode of season four of The Simpsons, "Lisa's First Word". It was featured in the children's program Dora the Explorer and in the South Park episode "Something You Can Do with Your Finger". A child singing the rhyme twice can be heard in the opening of the Criminal Minds episode, "Gatekeeper". In the Netflix adaptation of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, during the middle of the episode "Slippery Slope, Part 1", during the scene where the Baudelaires escape the Snow Scouts, Lemony Snicket tells the viewers to refer the scene to the song, knowing they learned it in their childhoods.