HIGGLEDY, piggledy, my black hen,
She lays eggs for gentlemen,
Sometimes nine and sometimes ten;
Gentlemen come every day
To see what my black hen has laid.
The clue as to how to read this rhyme is in the opening words. Indicating a state of confusion and disorder, the expression higgledy, piggledy was first recorded at the end of the fifteenth century. There are various other versions of the phrase, such as ‘higly pigly’, but the key thing is that they all appear to involve pigs, or the confused herding together of these animals. Pigs have long been conventionally considered the dirtiest animals in the farmyard, living in a state of squalor – if you’re ever tempted to refer to a teenager’s bedroom as a pigsty, you’re using the same idea. But it’s no farmyard that’s being described in this rhyme; it’s a house of ill-repute, a brothel. The narrator is a pimp or procurer, my black hen is a prostitute and the gentlemen are her clients.
A similar rhyme, dating from the eighteenth century, makes a much clearer allusion to the subject:
Little Blue Betty lived in a den,
She sold good ale to gentlemen;
Gentlemen came every day
And little Blue Betty hopped away;
She hopped upstairs to make her bed
And tumbled down and broke her head.