Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

Like everyone and everything else in the Northeast, I am heartily sick of the poor, wet summer we are having thus far. It got me thinking of the child's rhyme:

It's raining, it's pouring,
The old man is snoring.
He went to bed and bumped his head,
And he wouldn't get up in the morning.

Foes anyone know the provenance of this? Who is the old man? Is the snoring a reference to thunder? Is "wouldn't" ("couldn't" in some versions?) get up in the morning a political reference to a minister getting his head lopped off?

Wikipedia says it is not seen in the US before 1939 and first noted by Charles Ives, the brilliant American musical composer. It 'feels' older.