"What Are Little Boys Made Of?" is a popular nursery rhyme dating from the early 19th century. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 821.
The author of the rhyme is uncertain, but may be English poet Robert Southey (1774â€"1843).
Lyrics
What Are Little Boys Made Of? - What are little boys made of. What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice, all that's nice; That's what boys of, Snips snails, puppy dogs' tails; And of some people claim that the nursery...
Here is a representative modern version of the lyrics:
The rhyme appears in many variant forms. For example, other versions may describe boys as being made of "snaps", "frogs", "snakes", or "slugs", rather than "snips" as above.
Origins
In the earliest known versions, the first ingredient for boys is either "snips" or "snigs", the latter being a Cumbrian dialect word for a small eel.
The rhyme sometimes appears as part of a larger work called What Folks Are Made Of or What All the World Is Made Of. Other stanzas describe what babies, young men, young women, sailors, soldiers, nurses, fathers, mothers, old men, old women, and all folks are made of. According to Iona and Peter Opie, this first appears in a manuscript by the English poet Robert Southey (1774â€"1843), who added the stanzas other than the two below. Though it is not mentioned elsewhere in his works or papers, it is generally agreed to be by him.
The relevant section in the version attributed to Southey was:
In popular culture
The nursery rhyme's notion of the composition of girls was the inspiration behind the Cartoon Network original series The Powerpuff Girls, in which Professor Utonium creates the Powerpuff Girls by adding together sugar, spice, and everything nice (and Chemical X by mistake). In the same show, Mojo Jojo gathers the snips and snails and a puppy-dog tail and flushes them down a toilet to create the Rowdyruff Boys. It also inspired the Sophie comic series, in which a young girl, Sophie Karamazout, is created in the laboratory by Mr. Karamazout.
Extracts from the nursery rhyme appear in several popular songs, including "Sugar and Spice" by The Searchers, from 1963. "Sugar and spice, and all things nice" is also a verse in the Stone Roses early single "Sally Cinnamon". Alternative rock band Garbage incorporate the words of the rhyme in their song, "What Girls Are Made of," on the Deluxe edition of their 2012 studio album Not your Kind of People.
In October, 1966, a Star Trek: The Original Series episode titled What Are Little Girls Made Of? was released, describing the culmination of Nurse Chapel's search for her fiancée (Korby), and the discovery of his plans for conquest.
See also
List of folk songs by Roud number
References
