To Market, To Market

DESCRIPTION: "To market, to market, to buy a (plum bun/plum cake/fat pig/etc.), Home again, home again, jiggety jig, To market, to market, to buy a fat hog, Home again, home again, jiggety-job"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1598 (Florio, A World of Words, according to the Opies)
KEYWORDS: animal commerce
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 339, "To Market, To Market" (2 texts)
Baring-Gould-AnnotatedMotherGoose #565, pp. 230-231, "(To market, to market)"
Dolby-OrangesAndLemons, p. 112, "To Market, To Market, to Buy a Fat Pig" (2 texts)
Roud #19708
NOTES [90 words]: The incomparable Katherine Elwes Thomas, in The Real Personages of Mother Goose, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co., 1930, p. 73f., says this is about Henry VIII and the machinations to get Henry a divorce from Katherine of Aragon and then get rid of Anne Boleyn (and Thomas Cromwell). As usual, she has no evidence. Even more hilariously, she apparently forgot that theory, and on p. 234 claims that a different version of the piece is about Charles II ("Curly Locks") and a pension he hoped to get from Louis XIV of France (the "plum bun"). - RBW
Last updated in version 6.2
File: OO2339

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