# origin of "Polly want a cracker"?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-polly-want-a-cracker/476171
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [December 7, 2008, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-polly-want-a-cracker/476171 "2008-12-07T22:09:26Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@tim314](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim314)
#### Post date: [December 7, 2008, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-polly-want-a-cracker/476171/1 "2008-12-07T22:09:26Z")
Everyone seems to have heard of parrots saying “Polly want a cracker,” but where did this come from? If the origin of the phrase can’t be established, I’d settle for knowing how it was popularized. My first thought was maybe Long John Silver’s parrot had said it in either the book or movie versions of Treasure Island, since as Cecil has noted Silver popularized many of our pirate cliches. But Silver’s parrot was named “Captain Flint”, not Polly. Searching wikipedia I see that the phrase was used in a 1947 [Bugs Bunny cartoon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buccaneer_Bunny), but I don’t see anything to indicate that Bugs originated the phrase.
Searching the forum reveals a couple brief threads on this, but with no definitive answers, other than that the name “Polly” for a parrot apparently dates back centuries. Still, I can’t help but think the image of a parrot saying “Polly want a cracker” wouldn’t have been well known until the invention of movies – how many people had even _seen_ a parrot in the 19th century?
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### Author:  [@Markxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Markxxx)
#### Post date: [December 7, 2008, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-polly-want-a-cracker/476171/2 "2008-12-07T23:51:39Z")
I recall a Popeye cartoon, it was the ones where Popeye mumbles a lot so it must’ve been an older version, where the Polly parrot wanted a cracker.
I wonder if the two could be seperate, you know let’s say Polly as a name for a parrot dating back a hundred years, while any parrot by any name asking a cracker could date to another time, before the two got combined
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### Author:  [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)
#### Post date: [December 8, 2008, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-polly-want-a-cracker/476171/3 "2008-12-08T00:19:37Z")
Wasn’t there a reference to a parrot named Polly in a Sherlock Holmes story? Or _some_ Conan Doyle story.
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### Author:  [@Harmonious\_Discord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harmonious_Discord)
#### Post date: [December 8, 2008, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-polly-want-a-cracker/476171/4 "2008-12-08T01:31:44Z")
[1906 - The New Pun Book](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22495/22495-h/22495-h.htm) You may find this one worth reading for the puns.
[1896 - A Little Girl in Old New York](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23780/23780-h/23780-h.htm)
[1901 - The Portion of Labor](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18011/18011-h/18011-h.htm)
[1869 - Baby Pitcher’s Trials](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19390/19390-h/19390-h.htm)
[1872 - Barriers Burned Away](http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/brrbw10.txt)
These are just some of the book I found. I listed the oldest ones and gave the date of copyright.
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### Author:  [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)
#### Post date: [December 8, 2008, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-polly-want-a-cracker/476171/5 "2008-12-08T01:39:41Z")
I can find the phrase in a book from 1849. I’m working on finding the origin. Earlier, they were called “Poll parrot.”
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### Author:  [@Harmonious\_Discord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harmonious_Discord)
#### Post date: [December 8, 2008, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-polly-want-a-cracker/476171/6 "2008-12-08T01:50:34Z")
[1873 - Polly Want A Cracker](http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=mussm&fileName=sm/sm1873/12500/12542/mussm12542.db&recNum=0&itemLink=h?ammem/mussm:@field(NUMBER+@band(sm1873+12542))&linkText=0) Sheet Music
I’m done with the searches.
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### Author:  [@NinjaChick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NinjaChick)
#### Post date: [December 8, 2008, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-polly-want-a-cracker/476171/7 "2008-12-08T02:34:20Z")
In Gustave Flaubert’s _Un Couer Simple_, written in 1877-ish, it’s mentioned that people are unpleasantly surprised that a parrot’s name is Loulou and not Jacquot. So it’s not Polly (though in some English translations, it’s translated as such), but it is evidence that the common-parrot-name phenomenon is well over a hundred years old and not exclusive to the English-speaking world.
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### Author:  [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)
#### Post date: [December 8, 2008, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-polly-want-a-cracker/476171/8 "2008-12-08T03:30:08Z")
Earliest(1849) for the exact phrase “Polly want a cracker” is
> [@The Knickerbocker; or New-York Monthly Magazine 1849](#):
>
> For sale, a Poll Parrot, cheap. He says a remarkable variety of words and phrases, cries ‘Fire! Fire!’ and ‘You Rascal,’ and ‘Polly want a Cracker,’ and would not be parted with, but having been brought up with a sea-captain he is profane and swears too much for the subscriber, being a pious man and having children in the family, to whom his example is bad. On this account he will be sold a bargain, but hoped that the purchaser will use his endeavors to break him of the habit, and make him know the penalty, which may be done by deprivin’ him of his coffee and not scratchin’ his hed for him when he puts it through the bars. The subscriber did not teach him swearin’; the sea-captain did it, who used to sail to Barbadoes, and is now dead, last autumn in Matanzas, Capt. Joliffs, but the bird keeps on swearin’ as before, and his feathers is green and white, and his bill handsome, twenty-five years old, but will live a hundred and go on improvin’ as he gets old. Those in want of a bird of this kind may hear of one to suit them by applying at this office.
I don’t know if the editor of the magazine wrote this, or perhaps a contributor. It certainly has the sound of a humorist of the day.
The phrase seems to become popular in the press in the 1880-95 period.
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### Author:  [@Garfield226](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Garfield226)
#### Post date: [December 8, 2008, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-polly-want-a-cracker/476171/9 "2008-12-08T04:03:33Z")
> [@Harmonious\_Discord](#):
>
> [1906 - The New Pun Book](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22495/22495-h/22495-h.htm) You may find this one worth reading for the puns.
This is hilarious, and includes one of the most painfully labored reproductions of the “Waiter Waiter! Have you got frog legs?” “No sir, I’ve always walked this way.” jokes I’ve ever read:
> [@](#):
>
> GUEST–What have you got?
>
> WAITER–I’ve got liver, calf’s brains, pig’s feet–
>
> GUEST–Hold up there! I don’t want a description of your physical
> peculiarities. What have you got to eat is what I want to know.
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### Author:  [@Markxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Markxxx)
#### Post date: [December 8, 2008, 6:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-polly-want-a-cracker/476171/10 "2008-12-08T06:35:04Z")
I Googled around and it said the book “Treasure Island,” was responsible for a lot of the popularity of “pirate” phrases.
Someone who read the book or has it might want to look in there
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### Author:  [@lynxie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lynxie)
#### Post date: [December 8, 2008, 9:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-polly-want-a-cracker/476171/11 "2008-12-08T09:05:59Z")
> [@Harmonious\_Discord](#):
>
> [1906 - The New Pun Book](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22495/22495-h/22495-h.htm) You may find this one worth reading for the puns.
Off Topic…
According to a florist’s magazine “Jacks are becoming cheap.”
This may be true, but we have known men who would have been
willing to pay $10 for one to put with the two already in their
hands.
Ummm - Huh? Anyone get this?
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### Author:  [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)
#### Post date: [December 8, 2008, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-polly-want-a-cracker/476171/12 "2008-12-08T12:39:27Z")
> [@lynxie](#):
>
> Off Topic…
>
> According to a florist’s magazine “Jacks are becoming cheap.”
> This may be true, but we have known men who would have been
> willing to pay $10 for one to put with the two already in their
> hands.
>
> Ummm - Huh? Anyone get this?
Poker hands maybe?
> [@Garfield](#):
>
> GUEST–Hold up there! I don’t want a description of your physical
> peculiarities. What have you got to eat is what I want to know.
Hilarious!
-FrL-
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### Author:  [@lynxie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lynxie)
#### Post date: [December 9, 2008, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-polly-want-a-cracker/476171/13 "2008-12-09T00:23:55Z")
> [@Frylock](#):
>
> Poker hands maybe?
Of course! That kind of Jack…and I play poker, too. :smack:
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### Author:  [@Mandrake\_the\_Magician](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mandrake_the_Magician)
#### Post date: [November 5, 2010, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-polly-want-a-cracker/476171/14 "2010-11-05T19:09:40Z")
Though I, too, see babbling about this on the Internet, Long John Silver’s parrot is in fact named “Captain Flint,” and at no point expresses an interest in crackers.
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### Author:  [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)
#### Post date: [November 5, 2010, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-polly-want-a-cracker/476171/15 "2010-11-05T20:05:14Z")
> [@samclem](#):
>
> I can find the phrase in a book from 1849. I’m working on finding the origin. Earlier, they were called “Poll parrot.”
That’s interesting. When I was a kid in the early 60s there was a shoe store chain called Poll Parrot, and they all had a parrot in the store. I had no idea the phrase existed before that.
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### Author:  [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)
#### Post date: [November 5, 2010, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-polly-want-a-cracker/476171/16 "2010-11-05T21:09:46Z")
> [@CookingWithGas](#):
>
> That’s interesting. When I was a kid in the early 60s there was a shoe store chain called Poll Parrot, and they all had a parrot in the store. I had no idea the phrase existed before that.
Ha! When I was a kid in the 1960s (or it may even have been the late 1950s) I can remember seeing junk shop window that had a stuffed parrot in a cage together with a packet of [Pollyfilla](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Polyfilla) (a brand of spackling paste in wide use at the time). As a kid, I thought it was a pretty good joke (and, more to the point, I understood it right away).
Polly as a standard name for a parrot has been around for a long, long time: centuries I think. Why or when it started I do not know.
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### Author:  [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)
#### Post date: [November 6, 2010, 6:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-polly-want-a-cracker/476171/17 "2010-11-06T06:33:44Z")
> [@Frylock](#):
>
> Poker hands maybe?
> [@lynxie](#):
>
> Of course! That kind of Jack…and I play poker, too. :smack:
But what does a jack have to do with a florist?
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### Author:  [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)
#### Post date: [November 6, 2010, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-polly-want-a-cracker/476171/18 "2010-11-06T11:45:28Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#):
>
> But what does a jack have to do with a florist?
Nothing. It was extremely common for magazines to have filler, including short jokes. I have no doubt you could have found the same joke as filler in many magazines from the turn of the century.
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### Author:  [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)
#### Post date: [November 6, 2010, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-polly-want-a-cracker/476171/19 "2010-11-06T12:15:31Z")
For it to be any kind of pun, no matter how bad, there must be a double meaning for “Jack”. Surely “Jacks” are some kind of flower, from the context?
> [@The New Pun Book](#):
>
> “Why do you call that colored man a blackmailer.”
> “Because he is employed at the post-office. And that ain’t the worst of it.”
> “No?”
> “No, sir; his wife takes hush money.”
> “You don’t say so!”
> “I do. She’s a child nurse.”
My sides!
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### Author:  [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)
#### Post date: [November 6, 2010, 12:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-polly-want-a-cracker/476171/20 "2010-11-06T12:27:11Z")
Further hijack: what’s striking me about that joke book is the “Irish = stupid” stereotype, that seems to have been long superseded in the US (Polacks? Blondes?), but was current in the UK when I was a kid.
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