If you grew up in the English-speaking world, you almost certainly heard this Mother Goose nursery rhyme:
This little piggy went to market,
This little piggy stayed home,
This little piggy had roast beef,
This little piggy had none.
This little piggy went
Wee, wee, wee
All the way home!
A piggy eating roast beef? Hmm... What, if any, are the ethics of that? Sometimes I still feel guilty about laughing when Matt and Trey Parker, the creators of South Park, fed bacon to Macon.
Did Macon stay home after that?
And what about the piggy that went to market? How did he/she get there?
Let's hope that the piggy on the back of that bike didn't become Macon's lunch!
Or was that Macon on the back of that bike?
For decades, I always interpreted the "went to market" line to mean that little piggy went shopping. It's only recently that it was suggested to me that a darker interpretation is possible, and even likely. In either case, how it got to the market is an unanswered question.
ReplyDeleteAilish--I think I interpreted in the same way as you did. Somewhere along the way, I started interpreting it in the darker way. Maybe I'm hanging around too many vegetarians!
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