Piggy with a house [S. Worthen | Weblog]

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For my own edification in the ways of foreign childrens' songs, I went to the local library baby and toddler singalong today. Fifty percent of the songs were unfamiliar to me. For another quarter, I knew the words, but not the tunes to which they were being sung.

And then there were moments like this, when what is probably - I hypothesize - a usual British Englishism I've been hearing for years stood out like a metaphorical sore thumb in what was an otherwise familiar sequence.

[Poll #1869024]

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There are 35 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

Thought pattern:
- damn colonials, missing out words and mangling the language!
- this little piggy went to market, this little piggy sta-
- oh.
- huh.

Wait! Which is which? My instinct was "stayed home", but my instincts tend to skew half British and half American thanks to my dad's British education, so I never know where a particular instinct is coming from.

I was raised in the US with "stayed home". Today at the library in the UK, it was "stayed at home".

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I wouldn't expect the difference to be regional - it's just a case of slowly-disappearing datives. Somewhere in that singer's song-handing-down past, someone's thought "hang on, that needs a preposition!"

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And I meant to also specify, I was assuming that the explanation for the difference was British English vs. American English in my experience but thought a poll might be the easiest way to check to be sure if that was the explanation; also, what responses from people from Canada, NZ, Australia etc. might be.

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Heh, then I should probably stay out of it, having been raised in the suburban US by parents with Canadian and British backgrounds respectively. :D

Also, I love how people on both sides of this debate are arguing that the other possibility doesn't scan correctly.

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This is why I have long since given up asking people where their language use may be from - we're mostly too complicated for that! I browse for patterns based on what I happen to know/remember/notice about people, and thus might well miss what are actually relevant factors sometimes.

I kind of love that we're discussing scansion without anyone having gone so far as to write out the entirety of the version they're using. I only noticed the one difference at the library, but that doesn't mean everyone else here would say the rest of the piece as I learned to.

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For an 'at' to scan in that line, what in the world do the other lines sound like?

(US)

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I think that they probably sound pretty much the same, but the lines you (that is, one, not you personally) compare are probably different. Theory:

UK:
AABB pattern
2x line with the rhythm of 'This little piggy went to' + 1 or 2 syllables
2x line with the rhythm of 'This little piggy had' + 1 or 2 syllables

US:
ABAB pattern, where A is a longer line and B is a line of 7 syllables with a rhyme or half-rhyme.

Just a thought, but it might explain why both sides are convinced theirs scans better - they're consciously or unconsciously expecting that line to match a different pattern. Or of course, it could just be a case of the version you're used to sounding better.

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I personally think if you add the "at", it throws off the rhythm of the rhyme, but that could just be the way I say it.

(I also routinely make up variations where this little piggy went out for sushi, this little piggy had roast beef, etc. etc.)

I agree on the rhythm (having primarily studied poetry as a creative writing undergrad). But, I am willing to concede that I may have a built in bias, since the omitted "at" is the way I learned it.

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I always thought it was "went home"

But that would somewhat duplicate the last little piggy who goes "whee, whee, whee".

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When I was taught this by my English working class Granny in the 1950s it was "stayed home."

And I know it as 'stayed at home' - which suggests that it may be a regional rather than an age variation (me being London and you being Yorkshire).

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But I grew up in Manchester and it was definitely "stayed at home". Unless there's an east/west Pennines difference.

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Thank you! It might not have been clear from my post that it was only a hypothesis that "stayed at home" was a difference of ocean sides.

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"Stayed at home" - it doesn't scan right otherwise.

Depends on where you're from. Scans wrong to me if it's "stayed at home"!

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I'm with

sollersuk 'Stayed at home', which I suspect means it depends how you say the rhyme whether the 'at' is required or not.

FF

When you put it that way - "home" and "none" have entirely different "o" sounds, so don't actually rhyme for me in the first place! (Leaving aside the n/m difference, of course.)

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Or, indeed, how you pronounce 'home' (in my case without the 'h').

Thinking about it I actually say it as "This little piggy stayed a tome." Which gives rise to surreal literary images.

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Definitely stayed at home. This little piggy had roast beef, this little piggy had none...

And this little piggy went "wee, wee, wee"

All the way home.

How could it be anything else?

But then some damned Colonials don't sing "Ring a ring a rosie"...

To what degree do "home" and "none" rhyme for you, vowel-wise?

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Ring a ring o' roses, surely? :)

I, with my south-east England upbringing, have only ever heard the "stayed at" variant, and while it doesn't surprise me the US version omits the preposition, I hadn't considered there might be regional variations here. Interesting.

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My British husband (

desperance) insists that "stayed at home" is the one right, true, holy way of saying the line, but American me learned "stayed home" as child, and that's all I've heard until this point at age 49 and a half.

(Her husband

desperance is right. I'm just sayin'.)

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'At home' is the version in the music textbook at my schoolin Northolt, West London.

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Wikipedia's "most common modern version" is the one I grew up with, as did all right-thinking English people. I note that their alternate version has the alternate wording, but also offers jam and bread in lieu of roast beef. There's probably a lesson in that.

I also note that - as suspected - the verse is English in origin, so we're right by definition. Harrumph.

I've never come across the jam version. How very tame.

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I clicked 'stayed at home', but - as so often with these kinds of polls - was afterwards struck by existential doubt as to whether my choice was correct. Having had my little crisis, I'm again fairly sure I'd use 'at home'...

Definitely 'stayed at home'. And roast beef. And there's some assonance in home/none but it doesn't feel like it's trying to be a rhyme.

Just to be difficult, my Irish husband insists that the verse he grew up with was:

This little piggy went to market,
This little piggy went to the fair...

?!?!?!

I will ask his mother when she comes to visit at Thanksgiving.

Unless you're in Yorkshire, that version really doesn't scan. :)

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Was definitely "stayed home" in Canada in the 70s. I've never heard it any other way. On the other hand, I've heard both "this little piggy ate roast beef" and "this little piggy had roast beef".

October