Figgie Hobbin

Figgie Hobbin
Author	Charles Causley
Illustrator	Pat Marriott
Language	English
Genre	Children's poetry
Publisher	Macmillan
Publication date	1970
Publication place	England
Media type	hardback
ISBN	0-333-12078-7
OCLC	22729750
Dewey Decimal	821/.9/14
LC Class	PZ8.3.C3134 Fi

Figgie Hobbin: Poems for Children is a children's poetry collection written by the Cornish poet Charles Causley and first published in 1970. Since then it has gone through numerous reprints, including a notable version published in the United States in 1973, with illustrations by Trina Schart Hyman. It is dedicated to the artist Stanley Simmonds and his wife Cynthia.^[1]

The poems' subjects are fairly evenly split between gentle introspection and delighting in random nonsense. The poem from which the book gets its title speaks of the old King of Cornwall, tempted with all sorts of exotic dishes, who petulantly tells his servants to take it all away and bring him what he really wants—a humble dish of figgie hobbin. (Figgy hobbin:- plain pastry, cooked with a handful of raisins (raisins being "figs" and figs "broad raisins").^[2]

Poems

Note: the following poems are printed in the U.S. edition of the book. The U.K. edition may contain a slightly different collection of poems.

I saw a jolly hunter
A fox came into my garden
'Quack!' said the billy goat
Colonel Fazackerley
Tell me, tell me, Sarah Jane
As I went down Zig Zag
Logs of wood
Old Mrs. Thing-um-e-bob
King Foo Foo
Riley
At nine of the night I opened my door
My mother saw a dancing bear
Figgie Hobbin

References

^ *Green, Laurence (2013). All Cornwall Thunders at My Door: A Biography of Charles Causley. Sheffield: Cornovia Press. p. 152. ISBN 978-1-908878-08-3.
^ Mary Maddock. "Figgie Hobbin Recipe – Cornish Recipes". greenchronicle.com. Retrieved 7 February 2015.