@when she felt her wings unfold  
Interesting. That leads me to wonder, assuming my thoery’s right, could the incident have happened in the vicinity of an inn somewhere?

@SinnerWhoKeepsTrying1978  
To the Wikipedias! “The Cat and Fiddle” is a name used by inns since the 1500s. Way earlier than the rhyme being set down in a modern-ish form (1700s). So presumably the pub has a sideline in illicit distillation? *Oh gosh oh no: if Majesty ever finds out, Farmer Barleycorn is probably going to end up as a folk song himself. That’s if he’s lucky and Majesty’s feeling generous.*
 
Earlier still, cats on bowed string instruments and bagpipes are relatively common marginalia and decorative elements in mediaeval manuscripts, but it’s along with other animals doing human things. Still, the idea must have been around since people have been making instruments that sound a bit like a cat’s wauling.
 
@Korora  
Can’t fault a scholar parodying the more unevidenced bits of his own line of work.
 
There’s a lot of unsinkable dreck talked about nursery rhymes being based on sooper-dark real world events. The best known example being Ring-a-Ring-o’-Roses which, okay, isn’t about the Black Death. I guess the edgelord tendency prefers to repeat stories about Wee Willie Winkie being some deviant Edinburgh night stalker, but what you gonna do?

I wouldn’t be surprised if “Hey Diddle Diddle” was based on an actual event. Maybe a little boy eating his food by moonlight, watching the moon set, when a cow, wanting to graze on the opposite side of where the boy was eating and not wanting to interrupt him, jumped over his perspective. Such a display would’ve been as much of a surprise for the boy, who must’ve lost his plate and spoon and couldn’t find them, as for his pet dog, who likely started barking at the cow.
 
As for the cat and fiddle, constellations, maybe?
 
Wait, how did that cow get into moonshine?

Covered in moonshine.  
Whew

“There is an inn, a merry old inn/Beneath an old gray hill…” – Bilbo Baggins, “The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late”