If wishes were horses, beggars would ride
Template:Short description Script error: No such module "Unsubst". Script error: No such module "Infobox".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters"."If wishes were horses, beggars would ride" is a proverb and nursery rhyme, first recorded about 1628 in a collection of Scottish proverbs,[1] which suggests if wishing could make things happen, then even the most destitute people would have everything they wanted.[2] It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 20004.
Lyrics
Common newer versions include:
And also:
A shorter variant:
A variant intended to be humorous:
Origin
The first recognizable ancestor of the rhyme was recorded in William Camden's (1551–1623) Remaines of a Greater Worke, Concerning Britaine, printed in 1605, which contained the lines: "If wishes were thrushes beggars would eat birds".[3] The reference to horses was first in James Carmichael's Proverbs in Scots printed in 1628, which included the lines: "And wishes were horses, pure [poor] men wald ride".[3] The first mention of beggars is in John Ray's Collection of English Proverbs in 1670, in the form "If wishes would bide, beggars would ride".[3] The first versions with close to today's wording was in James Kelly's Scottish Proverbs, Collected and Arranged in 1721, with the wording "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride".[3] The rhyme above was probably the combination of two of many versions and was collected by James Orchard Halliwell in the 1840s.[4] The last line was sometimes used to stop children from questioning and get to work: "If if's and and's were pots and pans, there'd surely be dishes to do."
Notes
<templatestyles src="Reflist/styles.css" />
- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ a b c d G. L. Apperson and M. Manser, Wordsworth Dictionary of Proverbs (Wordsworth, 2003), p. 637.
- ↑ Cite error: Script error: No such module "Namespace detect".Script error: No such module "Namespace detect".
Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".