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.

The second little pig is extremely mischievous. He wants to go to market, too, but his mischief cannot be trusted very far.

Left alone, this naughty pig leaves his studies, teases the cat, breaks his brother’s toys, and eats the jam. Then, when his mother returns and falls asleep, the little pig ties her to the chair.

The Roast Beef

The third little pig is extremely good and considerate. With clean face and hands, he joyfully obeys his mother. He quietly studies and, at tea time, he helps make the tea without spilling anything. Later, while playing, he sees a blind old pig who lost his dog. Feeling pity for the old pig, the little pig gives him a halfpenny. For all his kindness, this pig is rewarded with roast beef.

The fourth pig is very obstinate and willful. Instead of learning his lessons, he tears his book up and runs away to play with the other idle pigs.

After getting thrashed by one of the other pigs, he is afraid to go home, so the obstinate little pig stays out in the dark and eventually contracts a cold.

‘Wee Wee Wee’

The fifth little pig is very naughty and disobedient. Though he has been told not to fish in Farmer Grumpey’s part of the river, he fishes there anyway. He catches a large fish but, while carrying the fish home, Farmer Grumpey catches him. The little pig loses the fish, gets whipped by the farmer, and runs home crying, “Wee, wee, wee.”

Through this tale, Kronheim clarifies the children’s rhyme for us. He shows us that the individual actions of the pigs bring about certain outcomes: virtue brings reward and elevates others, while vice drags us and those around us down.

Kronheim shows, as Joseph Joubert says: “Virtue is the health of the soul. It gives flavor to the smallest leaves of life.” Virtue not only keeps us healthy, but it makes each small action that we make beautiful and flavorful.

When we allow virtue to permeate our smallest actions, we allow light and beauty to illuminate our entire lives. The small actions will compound until we finally realize that we have done something truly great!