Hello:
I have a version called "The Woman and Her Pig" in the children's poetry book
called "Tail Feathers from Mother Goose." There they cite a version "learned by
George Sweetman of Wincanton in Somerset, c. 1842 (printed in 'Word-Lore',
1926). I learned a Dutch version as a child, and I've heard a French Canadian
one on a children's music tape. And yes, I'd seen the Passover version, too!
Hermina
Paul Stamler wrote:
> Hi folks:
>
> I'm having a memory lapse. About ten years ago I heard the English
> singer/buttonbox player John Kirkpatrick sing a cumulative song with verses
> like "the ox wouldn't drink the water and the butcher wouldn't kill the ox
> and the pig jumped over the stile" or words to that effect. Somewhere in the
> cumulation is a "stick to beat the dog".
>
> What the heck is the song? A version of it shows up in my Passover haggadah,
> of all places. Can someone give me a title, and tell me how it got connected
> with Passover? (Especially since at least this version I came across has a
> pig in it, which would make the whole thing treyf.)
>
> I ask because Helen Creighton collected a fragment of it from a singer in
> Nova Scotia, and I'm trying to put that in some kind of context.
>
> Peace,
> Paul
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