This Little Piggy


"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.

Lyrics

The most common modern version is:

[Fingerplay]

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 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 is never stated.

Origins

In 1728, the first line of the rhyme appeared in a medley called "The Nurses Song". The first known full version was recorded in The Famous Tommy Thumb's Little Story-Book, published in London about 1760. In this book, the rhyme goes:

This pig went to market,
That pig stayed home;
This pig had roast meat,
That pig had none;
This pig went to the barn's door,
And cried week, week for more.

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".