To market, to market

"To market, to market", "To market, to market, to buy a fat pig" or To market, to buy a fat pig is a nursery rhyme which is based upon the traditional rural activity of going to a market or fair where agricultural produce would be bought and sold. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19708.

Lyrics

The first complete recorded version of the rhyme appeared in 1805 in Songs for the Nursery with no reference to a pig:

When the rhyme reappeared later in the nineteenth century, it took the now common form:

There have been many variations such as this reworking:

Origins

The rhyme is first recorded in part in John Florio's, A Worlde of Wordes, or Most Copious, and exact Dictionarie in Italian and English, published in 1598, which defines "Abomba" as 'a man's home or resting place: home againe, home againe'. The 1611 edition is even clearer, referring to "the place where children playing hide themselves ...Also as we used to say Home againe home againe, market is done." We do not have records again until the following version was printed in Songs for the Nursery (1805):

Nursery rhyme

A nursery rhyme is a traditional poem or song for young children in Britain and many other countries, but usage only dates from the late 18th /early 19th century. In North America the term Mother Goose Rhymes, introduced in the mid-18th century, is still often used.

History

Lullabies

The oldest children's songs of which we have records are lullabies, intended to help a child sleep. Lullabies can be found in every human culture. The English term lullaby is thought to come from "lu, lu" or "la la" sound made by mothers or nurses to calm children, and "by by" or "bye bye", either another lulling sound, or a term for good night. Until the modern era lullabies were usually only recorded incidentally in written sources. The Roman nurses' lullaby, "Lalla, Lalla, Lalla, aut dormi, aut lacta", is recorded in a scholium on Persius and may be the oldest to survive.

Many medieval English verses associated with the birth of Jesus take the form of a lullaby, including "Lullay, my liking, my dere son, my sweting" and may be versions of contemporary lullabies. However, most of those used today date from the 17th century. For example, a well known lullaby such as "Rock-a-bye, baby on a tree top", cannot be found in records until the late-18th century when it was printed by John Newbery (c. 1765).

Market

Market may refer to:

Art, entertainment, and media

Film

Television

Brand or enterprise

Types of economic markets

Aspects of economic markets

To Market To Market (film)

To Market To Market is a 1987 Australian political film directed by Virginia Rouse who was once an assistant to Paul Cox.

The movie was made with funding from the Australian Film Commission and Film Victoria.

References

External links

Mother Goose

The figure of Mother Goose is the imaginary author of a collection of fairy tales and nursery rhymes often published as (Old) Mother Goose's Rhymes. As a character, she appears in one nursery rhyme. A Christmas pantomime called Mother Goose is often performed in the United Kingdom. The so-called "Mother Goose" rhymes and stories have formed the basis for many classic British pantomimes. Mother Goose is generally depicted in literature and book illustration as an elderly country woman in a tall hat and shawl, a costume identical to the peasant costume worn in Wales in the early 20th century, but is sometimes depicted as a goose (usually wearing a bonnet).

Identity

Mother Goose is the name given to an archetypal country woman. She is credited with the Mother Goose stories and rhymes popularized in the 1700s in English-language literature, although no specific writer has ever been identified with such a name.

17th century English readers would have been familiar with Mother Hubbard, a stock figure when Edmund Spenser published his satire Mother Hubberd's Tale in 1590; as well as with similar fairy tales told by "Mother Bunch" (the pseudonym of Madame d'Aulnoy) in the 1690s. An early mention appears in an aside in a French versified chronicle of weekly happenings, Jean Loret's La Muse Historique, collected in 1650. His remark, comme un conte de la Mère Oye ("like a Mother Goose story") shows that the term was readily understood. Additional 17th century Mother Goose/Mere l'Oye references appear in French literature in the 1620s and 1630s.