"Pease Porridge Hot" or "Pease Pudding Hot" is a children's

singing game A singing game is an activity based on a particular verse or rhyme, usually associated with a set of actions and movements. As a collection, they have been studied by folklorists, ethnologists, and psychologists and are seen as important part of ...

and

nursery rhyme A nursery rhyme is a traditional poem or song for children in Britain and many other countries, but usage of the term dates only from the late 18th/early 19th century. The term Mother Goose rhymes is interchangeable with nursery rhymes. From t ...

. It has a

Roud Folk Song Index The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of around 250,000 references to nearly 25,000 songs collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world. It is compiled by Steve Roud (born 1949), a former librarian in the London ...

number of 19631.

Lyrics

The lyrics to the rhyme are: :Pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold, :Pease porridge in the pot, nine days old; :Some like it hot, some like it cold, :Some like it in the pot, nine days old.

I. Opie and P. Opie Iona Margaret Balfour Opie, (13 October 1923 – 23 October 2017) and Peter Mason Opie (25 November 1918 – 5 February 1982) were an English married team of folklorists who applied modern techniques to understanding children's literature and ...

, ''The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes'' (Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), p. 345.

Origin

The origins of this

rhyme A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds (usually, the exact same phonemes) in the final stressed syllables and any following syllables of two or more words. Most often, this kind of perfect rhyming is consciously used for a musical or aesthetic ...

are unknown. The name refers to a type of

porridge Porridge is a food made by heating or boiling ground, crushed or chopped starchy plants, typically grain, in milk or water. It is often cooked or served with added flavourings such as sugar, honey, (dried) fruit or syrup to make a sweet cereal, ...

made from

pea The pea is most commonly the small spherical seed or the seed-pod of the flowering plant species ''Pisum sativum''. Each pod contains several peas, which can be green or yellow. Botanically, pea pods are fruit, since they contain seeds and d ...

s. Today it is known as

pease pudding Pease pudding, also known as pease porridge, is a savoury pudding dish made of boiled legumes, typically split yellow peas, with water, salt and spices, and often cooked with a bacon or ham joint. A common dish in the north-east of England, ...

, and was also known in

Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English p ...

as pease pottage. ("Pease" was treated as a

mass noun In linguistics, a mass noun, uncountable noun, non-count noun, uncount noun, or just uncountable, is a noun with the syntactic property that any quantity of it is treated as an undifferentiated unit, rather than as something with discrete elemen ...

, similar to "oatmeal", and the singular "pea" and plural "peas" arose by

back-formation In etymology, back-formation is the process or result of creating a new word via inflection, typically by removing or substituting actual or supposed affixes from a lexical item, in a way that expands the number of lexemes associated with the c ...

.) The earliest recorded version of ''Pease Porridge Hot'' is a riddle found in

John Newbery John Newbery (9 July 1713 – 22 December 1767), considered "The Father of Children's Literature", was an English publisher of books who first made children's literature a sustainable and profitable part of the literary market. He also supported ...

's ''Mother Goose's Melody'' (c. 1760): :Pease Porridge hot, ::Pease Porridge cold, :Pease Porridge in the Pot ::Nine Days old, :Spell me that in four Letters? ::I will, THAT.Whitmore, ''The Original Mother Goose's Melody'', No. 41. Where the terms "pease pudding" and "pease pottage" are used, the lyrics of the rhyme are altered accordingly.

Game

Schoolchildren often play ''Pease Porridge Hot'' by pairing off and

clapping A clap is the percussive sound made by striking together two flat surfaces, as in the body parts of humans or animals. Humans clap with the palms of their hands, often quickly and repeatedly to express appreciation or approval (see applause), b ...

their hands together to the rhyme as follows: :''Pease'' (clap both hands to thighs) ''porridge'' (clap own hands together) ''hot'' (clap partner's hands), ::''pease'' (clap both hands to thighs) ''porridge'' (clap own hands together) ''cold'' (clap partner's hands), :''Pease'' (clap thighs) ''porridge'' (clap own hands) ''in the'' (clap right hands only) ''pot'' (clap own hands), ::''nine'' (clap left hands only) ''days'' (clap own hands) ''old'' (clap partner's hands). :''(Repeat actions for second stanza)'' NOTE: The actions are performed during recitation of the word or phrase, not following.

Notes

References

* Miller, Olive Beaupré. ''In the Nursery of My Bookhouse''. Chicago: The Bookhouse for Children Publishers (1920). * Whitmore, William H.
The Original Mother Goose's Melody, as First Issued by John Newbery, of London, About A.D., 1760
'. Albany: Joel Munsell's Sons (1889). *Wollaston, Mary A. (compiler). ''The Song Play Book: Singing Games for Children.'' New York: A.S. Barnes and Company (1922). {{Hand games Children's games Clapping games Singing games English nursery rhymes English folk songs Traditional children's songs Year of song unknown Songwriter unknown