| This Little Piggy | |
| Cover: | This Little Pig Went to Market by Lilly Martin Spencer, 1857, oil on cut arched board - New Britain Museum of American Art - DSC09337.JPG |
| Caption: | Illustration by Lilly Martin Spencer, 1857 |
| Type: | Nursery rhyme |
| Published: | 1760 |
"This Little Pig Went to Market" (often shortened to "This Little Piggy") is an English-language nursery rhyme and fingerplay. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19297.
The rhyme is usually counted out on an infant or toddler's toes, each line corresponding to a different toe,[1] usually starting with the big toe and ending with the little toe.
One popular version is:
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:[3]
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".[3] It was the eighth most popular nursery rhyme in a 2009 survey in the United Kingdom.[5]