Origins and Meaning
The first recorded version of the rhyme was collected by James Orchard Halliwell in the mid-nineteenth century with the lyrics:
- Rowley Powley, pumpkin pie,
- Kissed the girls and made them cry;
- When the girls began to cry,
- Rowly Powley runs away.
However, the version with Georgie Porgie was known to George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) in his childhood and so may be at least as old.
There are various theories that link the character Georgie Porgie to historical figures including George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham (1592-1628), Charles II (1630-1685) and George I (1660-1727), but there is no evidence to corroborate such claims.
Read more about this topic: Georgie Porgie
Famous quotes containing the words origins and, origins and/or meaning:
“Lucretius
Sings his great theory of natural origins and of wise conduct; Plato
smiling carves dreams, bright cells
Of incorruptible wax to hive the Greek honey.”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)
“Grown onto every inch of plate, except
Where the hinges let it move, were living things,
Barnacles, mussels, water weeds—and one
Blue bit of polished glass, glued there by time:
The origins of art.”
—Howard Moss (b. 1922)
“Unlike Freud, Jung did not believe that a dream is a mask for a meaning already known but deceitfully withheld from the conscious mind. In his view, dreams were communication, ideas expressed not always straightforwardly, but in the best way possible within the limits of the medium. Dreaming, in Jung’s psychology, is a constructive process.”
—Jeremy Campbell (b. 1931)