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The nursery rhyme "This Little Piggy" dates back at least as far as the 1720s and in the Roud Folk Song Index it now carries the number 19297. It is typically sung by a parent, who takes hold of each of her baby's toes, on a single foot, one for each line, and wiggles it.

Are there any other pieces of folklore that are sung or otherwise uttered while wiggling a baby's toes in succession, a different toe for each different line of the verse or story?

1 Answers1

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Per the OP's request, in Israel there's a Hebrew nursery verse called סבתא בישלה דייסה (Savta Bishla Daisa = Grandmother cooked Porridge), where parents grab a small child's fingers, counting off family members that received porridge, with the child in question being "finger no. 6", the one that didn't receive. This typically leads to the parent using their hand to crawl along the child's arm (and perhaps other body parts), to tickle while miming the grandmother's searches for finding more porridge, ending with "until she found (more) porridge":

סבתא בישלה דייסה
'נתנה לא
'נתנה לב
'נתנה לג
'נתנה לד
'נתנה לה
!ולו' לא נשאר
מה עשתה?
הלכה, הלכה, הלכה, הלכה עד שמצאה דייסה.

Translation:

Grandmother cooked porridge.
She gave to A
She gave to B
She gave to C
She gave to D
She gave to E
and for F (=child's name) nothing remained!
What did she do?
She went and went and went and went until she found porridge!

Transliteration:

Savta bishla daisa.
Natna le A
Natna le B
Natna le C
Natna le D
Natna le E
ve-le F lo nish'ar!
Ma asta?
Halkha, halkha, halkha, halkha ad she-matz'ah daisa!

One alternate version I'm aware of is סבתא אפתה עוגה (Savta Afta Ugah = Grandmother baked a Cake), with the same principal.

In this video an Israeli woman demonstrates this on her own hand.

I did not find any discussions of the origins of this verse. It's simply regarded as "folk". But, interestingly, upon checking to see if there are any such discussions of this verse, I discovered that both online and in books that mention it, many people also write the tickle-words: דיגי דיגי דיגי (digi digi digi, "G" as in "Go" = tickle, tickle, tickle) which come from the Hebrew word for tickling, דגדוג (digdug).

Side-note: Ultimately, it makes sense that Israelis, being mostly Jews, would not simply translate "This Little Piggy", since pigs are both considered not kosher and particularly taboo (as opposed to most other non-kosher animals) in Jewish culture for various reasons.

Harel13
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