Pease Porridge Hot

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"Pease Porridge Hot" or "Pease Pudding Hot" (also known as "Peas Porridge Hot" due to spelling corrections) is a children's nursery rhyme.

[edit] Origin

The origins of this rhyme are unknown; it takes its name from a type of porridge made from peas, pease pudding, also known as pease pottage (in Middle English, "pease" was treated as a mass noun, similar to "oatmeal" and it is from that we get the singular pea and plural peas). Some people believe^{[citation needed]} that the rhyme is a bit of doggerel by partisans of Princess Mary (Queen Mary I of England) celebrating the downfall of and disparaging the pretentions of Lady Jane Grey, the "Nine Days Queen", indicating that she was less than royal--pease pottage being a staple of lower class commoners.

Where the terms "pease pudding" and "pease pottage" are used, the lyrics of the rhyme are altered accordingly.

[edit] Lyrics

The lyrics to the rhyme are:

Pease porridge hot,

Pease porridge cold,

Pease porridge in the pot,

Nine days old;

Some like it hot,

Some like it cold,

Some like it in the pot,

Nine days old.

[edit] In popular culture

In episode 5 of the Internet cartoon Salad Fingers, Salad Fingers recites the Pease Pudding rhyme at a picnic.

The 1959 Billy Wilder film Some Like It Hot derives its title from this rhyme, and the 1985 hit song "Some Like It Hot" by the band Power Station was named after the movie.

In the 1966 Blake Edwards World War II comedy What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?, Major Pott (Harry Morgan) includes the last lines of the rhyme in his rantings after he is driven mad from getting lost in a maze of catacombs under the Sicilian village.

In the Little House books, Laura muses that she likes pease porridge hot and cold, but in her house it never lasts as long as nine days.

The song Pease Porridge from De La Soul's 1991 album De La Soul Is Dead contains a sample of the rhyme, taken from Pease Porridge by Rhyme & Rhythm.