This Little Piggy

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"This Little Piggy" is a nursery rhyme.

This little piggy went to market,

This little piggy stayed home.

This little piggy had roast beef,

This little piggy had none.

And this little piggy went "Wee! Wee! Wee!" all the way home.

The song is usually counted out on a child's fingers or toes. Thus, popular culture has given the individual digits the personae given in the song. The middle toe can be said to be the piggy who "had roast beef" for example, without counting out the whole song. A foot tickle is usually added during the "Wee...all the way home" section of the last line.

[edit] Other references

• The game was used repeatedly in Warner Bros. cartoons, such as A Tale of Two Kitties and A Hare Grows in Manhattan, typically when the "bad guy" in the film is hanging onto a line high above ground, and the protagonist peels off the antagonist's fingers one by one to the inevitable conclusion: "What do you know... Ran out of piggies!"

• Among the various television references to the rhyme is "This Little Piggy", the title of a comedic but significant episode of the Warner Brothers animated television series Justice League Unlimited, in which Wonder Woman is turned into a pig by the goddess Circe (comics).

• This Little Piggy Wears Cotton is the name of a children's store boutique originating in Santa Barbara, California.

• Both title and plot of Agatha Christie's Poirot novel Five Little Pigs (1942) refer to this nursery rhyme (as so many others).

• Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman depicts an adaptation of the rhyme, sang to the supposed antichrist by his demonic nursemaid.