Things you were shockingly old when you learned

How does the one who eats roast beef get his beef if not from the one who shops?

there's no reason to believe the piggy wasn't going to the market to shop. the alternative is just an edgy interpretation that people on social media decided was canon apparently. not every old children's thing is secretly violent!

years and years ago there was a popular tumblr post that was like "i just realized the meaning behind why did the chicken cross the road. crossing the road means death. the chicken committed suicide." this post had about a zillion likes and reblogs. i still see people repeating it today.

hitler had false teeth

learned that today

Literally only just discovered that Fats Domino was singing ‘I’ve found my thrill on blueberry hill’, not ‘I’ve found my freedom on blueberry hill’.

The chicken one is dumb but apparently most people knew the market meant slaughter! I genuinely think this is one where I was just being naive. :/

As the lyrics are dissected and analyzed, we realize that the rhyme’s origins may be less merry than the one we sing along to today. The first little piggy went to market, but not to buy groceries. Instead, to be sold. The other piggy stayed home to help keep the pig pen filled with other newborn piglets. The piggy that had roast beef needs to fatten up before it makes its own trip to the market. The other piggy needs to loose some weight before making its own journey to the market. As for the final piggy, there is a debate on it yelling “Wee, wee, wee”. One interpretation suggests that it’s out of fear at the prospect of going to market. While other interpretations suggest the rhyme is French in origin and the little piggy screams “Oui! oui! oui!” (Yes! Yes! Yes!), celebrating its escape to freedom!

I think it matters that it's English because maybe then the whole market thing is more clearly a meat market not a little shop.

guys

i just found out what “patty cake” really means

i’m still shaking

Ok I feel like you're joking but after this piggy fiasco I am scared to Google.

THere are several books on the meaning of nursery rhymes that show historical satire and things being part of the process.

BUt nothing like teaching the potentially short lived the pervasive presence of death and the market economy really is there

one of beatrix potter's longer stories -- THE TALE OF PIGLING BLAND (1913) -- is basically a novelisation of this nursery rhyme

potter as a realist (and also a farmer) doesn't completely erase the darker implications of the ambiguity, tho they are kept largely at the level of jokes apparent to the adult reading the tale to the child and revelations perhaps for the child blessed with curiosity and a willingness to ask questions

spoilers: pigling bland is sent to market with his brother alexander, but alexander loses his papers and a policeman takes him home to potter's farm (where he ends up being traded to a neighbouring farm where he "did fairly well when he had settled down"; the brother is maybe too young to become meat quite yet); bland gets lost, is seized by another farmer, meets up with a kidnapped black pig called pig-wig (how did you come to this farm he asks and pig-wig replies "stolen"; what for? he cries and she cheerfully replies "bacon, hams"): anyway they then escape and scamper across the county lane where they are safe and can retire to grow potatoes… "and over the hills and faraway she danced with pigling bland"

it was one of my favourites when young because it has such a sinister atmosphere, including a policeman saying "papers please"

in THE PIE AND THE PATTY-PAN (1905) a character becomes convinced another character is trying to kill her by means of a pattypan, so tracer is not entirely wrong lol

across the county LINE

As the lyrics are dissected and analyzed, we realize that the rhyme’s origins may be less merry than the one we sing along to today. The first little piggy went to market, but not to buy groceries. Instead, to be sold. The other piggy stayed home to help keep the pig pen filled with other newborn piglets. The piggy that had roast beef needs to fatten up before it makes its own trip to the market. The other piggy needs to loose some weight before making its own journey to the market. As for the final piggy, there is a debate on it yelling “Wee, wee, wee”. One interpretation suggests that it’s out of fear at the prospect of going to market. While other interpretations suggest the rhyme is French in origin and the little piggy screams “Oui! oui! oui!” (Yes! Yes! Yes!), celebrating its escape to freedom!

― Benson and the Jets (ENBB), Sunday, October 22, 2023 4:19 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

i'm even less convinced after reading this

this is the "ferris is a figment of cameron's imagination" of nursery rhymes

because i now know more than this little piggy than i ever thought i'd know and i'm ready to embarrass myself: the blog post this is from appears to be summarizing random reddit conversations, its only citation is to repeat the myth that the rhyme originated from blake, and the celebratory/french 'interpretation' makes no sense at all because the last line was "I can't find my way home" until at least the early 20th century

it is

HOGWASH

sorry, i linked to the wrong wrong blog post from that website

the correct interpretation of all eng-lang nursery rhymes is that they are about the black death

iirc from reading bits of the Opies all the sinister folk horror interpretations are retcon

recently discovered footage of that origin story:

https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/24/2023/01/pop-goes-the-weasel-037e5fa.jpeg

Ok well I have no idea anymore but all I can tell you is this came up at work months ago in a discussion with about 6 ppl who all thought this was completely obvious and known about the piggy and that I was the idiot. These are Def not Reddit people. Shrugs.

The existence of the word matchet which accompanied a photo in Voodoo In Haiti. Only heard the Spanish form of that before as far as i can remember,
So is it still a word or did it just disappear from usage because most people use the foreign alternative

i looked matchet up in SOED and get the strong impression that it only ever really existed as an anglicisation of the more-used spanish original

which etymonline suggests has either the same root as the word "mace" (mattea = war club) *or* as the words "mallet" and "maul" (marculus = a small hammer, from marcus, but see also malleus lol) (maul noun not verb there, meaning a two-handed hammer)

in conclusion the romans had a whole bunch of words for instruments with which to hit stuff

machete...

= the more-used spanish original yes

Spike Milligan named himself after Spike Jones.

on every online community I've ever been on where there is a thread like this, the piggy going to market always comes up, so I think most people "know" it from those.

I heard a doozy today. from someone who commented that Irish dancing was everywhere a couple of decades ago. they had not realised that Irish dancing is not line dancing.

Until this very moment, I thought this little piggie was shopping for the rest of the pigs.

I still think it's an open question as to what this little piggy is up to...

I guess what I meant was, I thought it was settled.

I'm sure there was a video of this on Sesame Street or something, but I'd never seen it done before and honestly I could watch this all day.

Pad printing (also called tampography) is a printing process that can transfer a 2D image onto a 3D objectpic.twitter.com/yfO1Hz0F7E

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) October 23, 2023

So squishy

From an 1878 Harper's review of a new collection of children's songs:

"Even in the nursery songs there is an upward tendency, as in the decidedly improved version of 'This little piggy went to market':

'This little pig to market went, And carried a market basket.'"

This suggests that the shopping interpretation is not the original meaning, and that the original one is darker.

Interesting! I didn't care enough to try to find other sources but the group this came up with initially we're mostly all over 60 and claimed to have known the pig's sad fate all their lives. As far as I'm concerned the pig is doing what we the reader feels comfortable with. Shop on little dude.

(That should have read "whatever the reader.)

I was taught the grimmer market meeting by my parents, probably as part of my vegetarian indoctrination lol.

meaning

i learned that christmas was not a holiday in scotland until 1958

And I learned that in 2015 Brunei passed a law completely banning Christmas, and even dressing up as Santa Claus can get you 5 years in jail.

I saw The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover when it came out in the theatres in 1989 and then I never saw it again. I have seen the poster, the VHS tape, and the DVD a million times and it wasn't until last week while sorting a box of DVDs at work that I looked at it closely wondering if maybe I wanted to watch it again when I noticed for the first time: Holy shit, that's Helen Mirren!! I didn't know who she was when I first saw the film and apparently I have NEVER read about it!

Did you notice her outfit changed? when she crossed into the restroom

A series of euphemisms about being institutionalised in a mental asylum based on locations of hospitals across Ireland.
Including "To got to Ballinasloe". A place I'd associate more with horses and travellers. But apparently it was a phrase used quite widely.
It's a theme in a local art festival opening shortly that had a curator's talk yesterday.

Xp Is there a current version of the rhyme where the infants digits are replaced by tofu or reconstituted soya. Or eat the farmer who's had a heart attack in their pen.
Or to borrow an idea from David Thomas embark on a career as a poet.

That Macaulay Culkin was in Jacob's Ladder as was George Costanza/Jason Alexander

Ha, I just re-watched this a few weeks ago and was surprised by both of these despite having watched it many times in the past.

Culkin was in Jacob's Ladder....and the pavement

I am finally a homeowner and my flat is fully electric (no gas). I've always relied on landlords to do things like maintaining boilers and replacing shower taps etc, so the list of "shockingly old when I learned" is growing

The idea that Columbus was fighting against an idea of the earth being flat was made up by Wash8ngton Irving according to Terry Jones in Medieval Lives and citing a book by J.B. Russell.
It was widely known since Greek times that the world was round. Columbus had the dimensions wildly out for what he was planning to do by circumnavigating. & there was a theory there must be a landmass there somewhere before he sailed. Have heard he followed maps used by cod fishermen. So the new info I'm getting here is the invention of the story by Irving.

always wondered if Columbus might have been at least vaguely aware of the Norse people's western misadventures

There was no Duolingo back then so nobody understood Swedish.