a href=”http://fragments.blogon.com/fragments/”>Fred First has moved into his new site but discovered an etymology problem, one that his entymology cannot help him with.
When we would leave home back when the kids were small, upon returning, we would say “home again, home again, frigitty frog”. We still say this, and the kids have their own kids. And I have no idea where this silly tradition came from. A nursery rhyme of favorite book, perhaps? If anyone recognizes this silly phrase, I stand to be enlightened. Meanwhile, friggity frog. I am home again, but to my new home here at blogon.com.
Fred, you got any Cockney Victorians in your family tree?
“Home again, Home again, frigitty frog” is obviously a corruption of the old nursery rhyme, To Market, To Market;
To Market, To Market To Buy A Fat Pig
Home again, home again, jiggity jig!
What’s interesting, at least to me, ok, probably only to me, is how it moved from “Jiggity Jig” to “Frigitty Frog”. My theory is that the rules of cockney rhyming slang would suffice for the change to the initial “Fr”, especially if applied by a child or someone not totally familiar with all the rules. Of course, this would leave one with a naughty word, one similar to the one that magically appears if you sing “Yankee Doodle” and sing each word with an initial “F”
Fankee Foodle fent fo fown…
Go ahead, I’ll wait.
Okay. Now we have a dirty word that someone’s mother recognized, and changed to “frog” so as not to disrupt the equines, which gives us the resultant “home again, home again, frigitty frog.” Think of it as a game of Broken Telephone played over generations.
Of course, it could just be that Fred’s hard of hearing, so he made up a Mondegreen. There’s no post in that explanation, though.
