Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig!

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Vivian Craft from San Antonio, Texas.

Hi, Vivian. Welcome to the show.

I have a question for you.

My father, who was born in 1913 in Pine County or Pine City, Minnesota, used to always use the phrase when we arrived home in St. Paul where we lived after a vacation.

And he would drive in, you know, put the car in neutral or turn it off, and he would go home again, home again, jiggity-jig.

It’s the only time he ever used that phrase.

And I’ve never heard anyone else in the Midwest, in Minnesota, in areas that I grew up, use the phrase.

No one in the relatives.

No one except my father.

And I was just wondering if you guys knew where it might have come from.

Oh, Vivian, absolutely.

My mother from the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia used to always do that.

When I was a little kid, every time we would pull into the driveway, she would do the same thing.

She would stop the car, say, home again, home again, jiggity jig.

And then she would turn off the car and shove that emergency brake.

I remember how that felt, just shoving that emergency brake.

But it was always that little ditty.

It was so funny because, like I said, he never used it.

My mother never used it.

And, you know, my father came from a family of eight brothers and sisters.

No one else ever used it, just my dad.

Well, would you believe it’s really, really, really old?

It goes back to an old nursery rhyme that has to do with the idea of farmers taking things to market and going to the market to get things.

And one old version of it goes to market, to market, to buy a fat pig.

Home again, home again, jiggity jig.

To market, to market, to buy a fat hog, home again, home again, jiggity jog.

To market, to market, to buy a plum bun, home again, home again, market is done.

And this goes back a couple hundred years at least.

And I think that the jiggity jig and the jiggity jog in that has to do with just kind of the way that farmers ride in wagons, you know, that motion.

There’s another nursery rhyme that actually goes, this is the way farmers ride, jiggity jog, jiggity jog.

And so I think it really evokes that feeling of being on a bumpy wooden wagon.

Yeah, that nursery rhyme was a game where the child rides on the adult’s knee.

Yeah, absolutely.

And so it’s one of those things where you hold the kid’s hand and you try to bounce them up and down on your knee and so they fall off at the end of it, right?

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And you’re recreating that experience, right?

And so that jiggity jog attached to the home again, home again from a different rhyme and they formed together in a new rhyme.

-huh.

Yeah.

So it’s kind of lovely, isn’t it, the way that that old image and that old feeling got reapplied into automobiles?

Yeah.

Far from markets and why.

Your dad and my mom.

It truly makes sense because my father was raised on a farm in Pine County and spent his first 23 years actually farming.

Wow.

Well, there you go.

I appreciate it.

Thank you so much for looking that up.

And I didn’t realize that that’s where it came from.

It’s very old.

Yeah, centuries old.

Are you carrying it on, by the way?

Actually, my son, my oldest son, would, when he heard my father saying it, he decided that he would add a little phrase of his own at the end.

And so it was, home again, home again, jiggity jig.

And therefore, we have another jig.

And therefore, we have another jig?

That was what he added?

Yeah.

I mean, it was like, okay, sure.

That’s fine, Garrett.

Whatever you want.

Thanks for calling, Vivian.

Thank you for your time and your research.

Bye now.

Thanks. Bye-bye.

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