A Pork’s Guide to Virtue: “Five Little Pigs”

Joseph Martin Kronheim's children's short story

Joseph Martin Kronheim tells how the "Five Little Pigs" nursery rhyme teaches how to be virtuous. American Literature. PD-art

This little piggy went to market, This little piggy stayed home, This little piggy had roast beef This little piggy had none, And this little piggy cried wee wee wee all the way home.

This toe wiggling Mother Goose rhyme usually comes with many giggles. Yet very few people know the moral story behind this fun rhyme. It is meant to inspire virtue.

In his short story, “Five Little Pigs,” Joseph Martin Kronheim illuminates the rhyme of the five little pigs. Through the different pigs’s actions, Kronheim shows that virtue deserves reward and merit, while mischief and vice do not.

To Market, at Home

The first little pig is a good pig who always works hard. He is “so active and useful that he is called Mr. Pig.” One day, he hops into his cart and heads to the market to sell vegetables. However, along the way, his donkey stops and will not move. Undeterred, Mr. Pig lifts the cart himself and pulls it all the way to the market where he sells all his produce.