Can anyone shed light on “This Little Piggy”? Do the divergent activities of the piggies represent some sort of 16th Century cultural metaphor? Is there a Freudian explanation? How did this come to be associated with toes, and to what purpose? Did someone think “home” rhymes with “none”?
Re: the piggie that “went to market”–presumably the big toe–does this mean it was slaughtered, or that it did the shopping, perhaps bringing home some roast beef? What emotion is “wee-wee-wee” meant to express–fear? glee? “I gotta go number 1”?–or is this simply a noise piggies make? “All the way home” from where?
The fingers all have names. I use the piggy designations when I need to refer to a specific toe, so it’s useful for that. My grandfather, for example, lost his roast-beef toe in a lawnmower accident.
Fabulously wealthy pop singers and rappers have rhymes ten times lamer than that.
Emily Dickinson is taught in colleges around the world and routinely forced “rhymes” that were based only on the written words having kinda sorta similar letters, even if pronounced very differently.
I doubt the stringency of the rhyme standards for nursery doggerel were ever especially high, all that being said . . . .
I always figured that it was because toes are roughly the shape of a pig’s torso and so they look like a group of piglets standing side by side. Well, it doesn’t quite work for the big toe, but you see what I mean, right?
Interestingly, I read on another message board that recent publications of the nursery rhyme have replaced ‘roast beef’ with something less likely to offend vegetarians. I think it is biscuit or celery. They’ve also replaced the piggy with ‘none’ to the more politically correct piggy had ‘fun’.
Takes all the merriment out of the game for me. Whenever I am blessed with grandchildren I will use the politically incorrect version.
Since we’ve gotten about as GQ an answer as there is, let me share my updated This Little Piggy with you:
This little piggy bought fair trade organically grown ethically harvested goods.
This little piggy grew his own.
This little piggy had non genetically modified soybean derived protein substitute.
This little piggy was fasting.
And this little piggy cried woo-woo-woo-woo! all the way home.
Actually, I’d say nursery rhymes have far stronger and simpler/cleaner rhymes than much serious poetry. That’s one reason I have difficulty with poetry that has a lot of hard one-syllable rhymes in AABBetc fashion–it sounds like a nursery rhyme to me.
This little froggie broke his toe
This little froggie heard him say, “Oh!”
This little froggie laughed, and was glad (evil laugh)
This little froggie cried, and was sad (sobs)
And this little froggie, so helpful and good
RAAAaaaan for the doctor as fast as he could (tickles, doctor situated in approximately the armpit region)
I dunno why. Toes might somewhat resemble piggies but they don’t at all resemble froggies.
I think it’s an anti gluttony fable. It tells, in alternate lines, the story of two little pigs. The first was taken to market, and the second was left behind. The first ate plenty of food, and got fat, while the second ate none, and stayed slim. And the first screamed as it was slaughtered.
That’s got to be it. Even if it’s not “it,” it makes so much sense that it should be.
Of course, when I was young, I thought going to the market was shopping, and the whole thing was just a description of some pigs’ trip to the grocery and back.
