What Are Little Boys Made Of?

"What Are Little Boys Made Of?"
Natural History
Nursery rhyme
Published	c. 1820
Songwriter(s)	Unknown

"What Are Little Boys Made Of?" is a popular nursery rhyme dating from the early 19th century. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 821.

The author of the rhyme is uncertain, but may be English poet Robert Southey (1774–1843).

Here is a representative modern version of the lyrics:

What are little boys made of?
What are little boys made of?
  Snips and snails
  And puppy-dogs' tails
That's what little boys are made of

What are little girls made of?
What are little girls made of?
  Sugar and spice
  And everything nice [or "all things nice"]
That's what little girls are made of

(There is more as you can see in the picture)

The rhyme appears in many variant forms. For example, other versions may describe boys as being made of "snaps", "frogs", "snakes", or "slugs", rather than "snips" as above.

In the earliest known versions, the first ingredient for boys is either "snips" or "snigs", the latter being a Cumbrian dialect word for a small eel.

The rhyme sometimes appears as part of a larger work called What Folks Are Made Of or What All the World Is Made Of. Other stanzas describe what babies, young men, young women, sailors, soldiers, nurses, fathers, mothers, old men, old women, and all folks are made of. According to Iona and Peter Opie, this first appears in a manuscript by the English poet Robert Southey (1774–1843), who added the stanzas other than the two below. Though it is not mentioned elsewhere in his works or papers, it is generally agreed to be by him.

The relevant section in the version attributed to Southey was:

What are little boys made of
What are little boys made of
Snips & snails & puppy dogs tails
And such are little boys made of.

What are young women made of
Sugar & spice & all things nice

The nursery rhyme's notion of the composition of girls was the inspiration behind the Cartoon Network original series The Powerpuff Girls, in which Professor Utonium creates the Powerpuff Girls by adding together sugar, spice, and everything nice (and Chemical X by mistake). In the same show, Mojo Jojo gathers the snips and snails and a puppy-dog tail and flushes them down a toilet to create the Rowdyruff Boys. It also inspired the Sophie comic series, in which a young girl, Sophie Karamazout, is created in the laboratory by Mr. Karamazout.

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