"Georgie Porgie" is a popular English language nursery rhyme. It has the Roud Folk Song Index number 19532.
"Georgie Porgie" is a popular English language nursery rhyme. It has the Roud Folk Song Index number 19532.
Originally the lyrics were:
These appeared in The Kentish Coronal (1841), where the rhyme was described as an "old ballad" with the name spelled "Georgy Peorgy". [1] That version persisted through most of the 19th century and was later illustrated by Kate Greenaway in 1881. [2] It was also quoted by Rudyard Kipling in the story named after it, published in 1891. [3]
James Halliwell-Phillipps did not record the words in his first collection of The Nursery Rhymes of England, but in the fifth edition of 1853 he included a variant:
And a Cheshire dialect version was quoted in 1887 with the variant "picklety pie" in place of Halliwell's "pumpkin pie". [5]
But by 1884 a version had appeared in which the third line read "When the boys came out to play", [6] and it was this reading which Iona and Peter Opie chose to perpetuate in their day in The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (1951). They also mentioned there various unsubstantiated conjectures that link the character Georgie Porgie to British historical figures, including King George I and George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, [7] claims that have been copied in other works of reference to this day.
Among children the verse has been used as a rhyming taunt for boys called George, or else of fat boys. It is also used to harass a boy who is considered not sufficiently manly, either because he is thought to fancy a girl, or (with a switch of sexes in line two) who is accused of being homosexually inclined. [8] It can also be used to tease a girl who fancies a boy, where, with other appropriate changes, she is addressed as "Rosie Posie". [9]
The rhyme was included in National Nursery Rhymes (London, 1870), a volume illustrated by George Dalziel and Edward Dalziel, where the words were set to music by James William Elliott. [10] And in 1885 they were set as a part song by the Canadian composer Joseph Gould under his musical pseudonym, Spencer Percival. [11] [12]
In 1924, Billy Mayerl and Gerald "Gee" Paul adapted the first two lines into the chorus of a novelty foxtrot [13] which was featured in the revue The Punch Bowl by Norman O'Neill [14] and subsequently covered by various jazz bands. [15] [16]
The 1978 song Georgy Porgy by Toto also features the first two lines of the rhyme. [17]
"The Three Little Pigs" is a fable about three pigs who build their houses of different materials. A Big Bad Wolf blows down the first two pigs' houses which are made of straw and sticks respectively, but is unable to destroy the third pig's house that is made of bricks. The printed versions of this fable date back to the 1840s, but the story is thought to be much older. The earliest version takes place in Dartmoor with three pixies and a fox before its best known version appears in English Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs in 1890, with Jacobs crediting James Halliwell-Phillipps as the source. In 1886, Halliwell-Phillipps had published his version of the story, in the fifth edition of his Nursery Rhymes of England, and it included, for the first time in print, the now-standard phrases "not by the hair of my chiny chin chin" and "I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house in".
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Georgy Porgy may refer to:
"Georgy Porgy" is a 1960 horror short story by Roald Dahl, collected in Kiss Kiss. The title is derived from "Georgie Porgie", a 19th-century English nursery rhyme. The story is about a neurotic and celibate vicar, George, who is pursued by lustful spinsters in his country parish.
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