Many is the time when I was younger, especially when sharing an ale or two with friends, that someone would raise the pheasant plucker's son or Mrs Puggy Wuggy or various other tongue twisters that had a bawdy element.
For those who may not have heard it, the rhyme is:
I’m not the pheasant plucker, I’m the pheasant plucker’s son.I’m only plucking pheasants till the pheasant plucker comes.
In the days of Merrie Olde England there probably were pheasant pluckers on the larger estates. Not having refrigeration and oftentimes hosting banquets, pheasant would have been a popular dish. Even the regular dinners for the lord of the manor and his family would probably have had pheasant from time to time.
These days the humour is in watching and hearing people get tongue tied and transpose the initial sounds. Strange then that it appears on a website “Poems for Children” at
What is of greater interest is that the above tongue twister is actually part of a longer and quite humorous song. It appears to be of some antiquity but its origins are unknown.
Hear it recited as a poem at
(I love the near slip at the 1.30 mark and the chuckle and comment at the end).
