Gregory Griggs

Gregory Griggs owns twenty-seven wigs and cannot decide which one he likes. That is the whole story, and that is the point. This short English nonsense rhyme is built for the mouth rather than for meaning, a tumble of hard "g" sounds that trips up anyone who tries to say it quickly.

Origins

The rhyme first appears in print in 1889, in a collection called Old Mother Goose's Rhymes and Tales. It has no clear folk ancestry and reads like a tongue-twister invented for its own sake. Arnold Lobel brought it to a new audience in his 1978 picture book of lesser-known Mother Goose characters. A date of 1765 is sometimes repeated online, but no publication that early has ever been found.

Meaning & Interpretation

There is nothing to decode. The fun is the picture of a vain man swapping hairpieces, up, down, east and west, forever trying to please the town and never settling on a favourite. A thread of satire runs underneath it: in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a wig signalled rank and money, so a man hoarding twenty-seven of them would have looked absurdly extravagant. But the rhyme wears its silliness lightly.

What is the meaning of Gregory Griggs?

The rhyme is a piece of traditional nonsense verse about a man who owns twenty-seven wigs. It has no deep historical meaning and is instead used as a rhythmic tongue-twister for children.

When was Gregory Griggs first printed?

The rhyme was first printed in the compilation Old Mother Goose's Rhymes and Tales in 1889.