"This Little Piggy" or "This little pig" is an English language

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 nursery rhyme

Nursery rhyme

The term nursery rhyme is used for "traditional" poems for young children in Britain and many other countries, but usage only dates from the 19th century and in North America the older ‘Mother Goose Rhymes’ is still often used.-Lullabies:...

 and fingerplay. It has a Roud Folk Song Index

Roud Folk Song Index

The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of 300,000 references to over 21,600 songs that have been collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world...

 number of 19297.

Lyrics

The most common modern version is:

This little piggy went to market.

This little piggy 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.

Finger play

The rhyme is usually counted out on a person's toes, each line corresponding to a different toe

Toe

Toes are the digits of the foot of a tetrapod. Animal species such as cats that walk on their toes are described as being digitigrade. Humans, and other animals that walk on the soles of their feet, are described as being plantigrade; unguligrade animals are those that walk on hooves at the tips of...

, usually starting with the big toe and ending with the little toe. A foot tickle is usually added during the "Wee...all the way home" section of the last line. It varies by the intensity of the tickle, and which parts of the foot are tickled. These often depend on by whom the game is played. The rhyme can also be seen as a counting rhyme, although the number of each toe (from 1 for the big toe to 5 for the little toe) is never stated. Although the game is usually played on a baby, it can be played on anyone with 5 toes.

Origins

The first line of this rhyme was quoted in a medley "The Nurse's Song", written about 1728, a full version was not recorded until it was published in The Famous Tommy Thumb's Little Story-Book, published in London about 1760. It then appeared with slight variations in many late eighteenth and early nineteenth century collections. Until the mid-twentieth century the lines referred to "little pigs".