Georgie Porgie

DESCRIPTION: "Georgie Porgie [or Rowley Poley], pudding and pie, Kissed the girls and made them cry, When the boys came out to play, Georgie Porgie ran away."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1844 (Halliwell)
KEYWORDS: courting escape food
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (6 citations):
Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 181, "Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie" (1 text)
Baring-Gould-AnnotatedMotherGoose #294, p. 170, "(Rowley Powley, pudding and pie)"
Abrahams-JumpRopeRhymes, #60, "Charley, Charley, wheat and rye" (1 text)
Jack-PopGoesTheWeasel, p. 44, "Georgie Porgie" (1 text)
Dolby-OrangesAndLemons, p. 67, "Georgie Porgie, Pudding and Pie" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: Tim Devlin, _Cracking Humpty Dumpty: An Investigative Trail of Favorite Nursery Rhymes_, Susak Press, 2022, pp. 23-30, "Georgie Porgie" (3 texts)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Charley Barley" (lyrics)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
Rowley Poley
NOTES [414 words]: Well-known in the twentieth century, but poorly attested historically -- the first version is Halliwell's, and it mentions "Rowley Powley," not "Georgie Porgie." This makes it interesting that many attempts have been made to link it to an historical George. The suggestions I have seen made for identifying George include:
- George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham (for whom see the notes to "A Horse Named Bill"), the favorite and perhaps the lover of James VI and I; despite his relationship with James I, he was heterosexual and did pursue women; the flight, in that case, might refer to the attempts to curb his influence, or to his 1627 expedition with James's son Charles I that ended disastrously. (For more about Buckingham, see of all things "A Horse Named Bill")
- Charles II, who had many mistresses but obviously wasn't named either "George" or "Rowley"
- George I, King of England 1702-1727, who put away his wife and had some of the ugliest mistresses known to the British court
- George IV, King of England 1820-1830 and Prince Regent before that, who also had a complicated sex life (he was an actual bigamist, although the English court refused to recognize his Catholic marriage and his second marriage functionally ended after one night; see the notes to "Queen Caroline"; also "The Ass and the Orangeman's Daughter") but was considered something of a coward. On the other hand, George IV had a weight problem in his middle years; maybe they cried because this not-very-attractive but stubborn man was after them....
Tim Devlin, Cracking Humpty Dumpty: An Investigative Trail of Favorite Nursery Rhymes, Susak Press, 2022, pp. 28-30, originally preferred George IV but then concluded that the "Rowley" version was about Charles II. His conclusion is that it originated with Charles II but was adapted to George IV.
I'm not dead sure this is about royalty, but let's assume it is. In earlier versions of the Index, I concluded that, If I absolutely had to pick one, I think I'd would have gone for Buckingham, since he's the only George who was actually attractive to women. The more I've studied George IV, though, the more I conclude that he was basically a great big suet pudding and deserved every bit of scorn that could be aimed at him. It makes a lot of sense that he was the target of the "Georgie Porgie" versions. Devlin's suggestion that this was a Charles II piece (or maybe a Buckingham piece, for all I know) adapted to George IV seems plausible to me. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.6
File: OO2181

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