Simple Simon (nursery rhyme)
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Simple Simon is a nursery rhyme which begins:
- Simple Simon met a pieman
- Going to the fair;
- Says Simple Simon to the pieman,
- "Let me taste your ware."
- Says the pieman to Simple Simon,
- "Show me first your penny."
- Says Simple Simon to the pieman,
- "Indeed I have not any."
Because of this, he became a comic foil in pantomime, most commonly Mother Goose.
[edit] Variations
Laurel and Hardy "played", respectively, Simple Simon and the pieman in Walt Disney's animated short, Mother Goose Goes Hollywood.
The Three Stooges did a variant version, which began the usual way, and ended this way...
- Said de pieman to Simple Simon,
- "Foist let me see yah penny."
- Said Simple Simon to de pieman,
- "Nah! Ya don't get any!"
- (And a pie in the face)
In the film Die Hard With A Vengeance, the antagonist Simon Gruber's, played by Jeremy Irons, first lines in the film are a taunt to the police:
"Said Simple Simon to the pie man going to the fair: Give me your pies... or I'll cave your head in."
Another variant of the nursery rhyme was an animated film on Sesame Street, in which instead of the pieman, Simple Simon meets three weird looking animals; a wingless duck with boots, a sheep with two small legs, and a snake with wings and boots. He presumes that something is wrong, and while he's thinking, the animals correct themselves until the have their correct parts. Then, somewhat late, Simple Simon has figured out what's wrong: "Sheep don't wear boots!"
