Published 1760 | ||
 | ||
"This Little Piggy" or "This little pig" is an English language nursery rhyme and fingerplay. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19297.
Contents
Lyrics
The most common modern version is:
Finger play
The rhyme is usually counted out on an infant or toddler's toes, each line corresponding to a different toe, usually starting with the big toe and ending with the little toe. A foot tickle is usually added during the "Wee...all the way home" section of the last line. The rhyme can also be seen as a counting rhyme, although the number of each toe (from 1 for the big toe to 5 for the little toe) is never stated.
Origins
In 1728, the first line of the rhyme appeared in a medley called "The Nurse's Song". The first known full version was recorded in The Famous Tommy Thumb's Little Story-Book, published in London about 1760.
The full rhyme continued to appear, with slight variations, in many late 18th and early 19th century collections. Until the mid-20th century, the lines referred to "little pigs".
In today's culture
In 2013, an Australian children's music group, The Wiggles, wrote a song "This Little Piggy Went to Market" with the same lyrics as the original This Little Piggy with different background music. In the same year, BilinguaSing released a bilingual version of the song in English and Spanish. The song is on The Wiggles' 2014 release Apples and Bananas (DVD and CD), and the song is sung with the American journalist Lee Hawkins.
On Tuesday, April 29, 2014, on The Today Show, Matt Lauer played This Little Piggy on Savannah Guthrie's toes.
On Monday, February 23, 2015, singer Christina Aguilera sang the rhyme in the voice of Britney Spears on "The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon" in the tune and instrumental of ...Baby One More Time.