The Pigtail

The Pigtail –William Makepeace Thackeray This poem ‘the pigtail’, written by William Makepeace Thackeray is a humorous poem, which revolves around a foolish act done by a sage. Throughout the poem, the poet laughs at this wise man, who does not have any practical knowledge, but uses his thearatical knowledge and does foolish things. In this poem, the sage tries to change his pigtail’s place and move it in front of his head and he thinks if he turn around and this pigtail would also turn and come infront of his head which is extremely funny. “There lived a sage in the days of yore And he a handsome pigtail wore”
The poet narrates us about a sage, who lived in the past with a beautiful pigtail. Usually sages are wise men and we expect them to do wise things. But this sage worrying over a pigtail which is actually useless. Even a common man can understand this truth, but this wise man is unable to understand this fact. He just think according to his logic and forgets even the practical side of the matter. As reader’s we understand what would happen if our hair grows in front of our head, we would be unable to see, breath understand it would affect our normal life and we would have to face so many bad consequences. The illogical, irrational behavior of this sage creates humour, and we readers cannot help agreeing that the poet has made humour successfully , out of sage’s behavior. “he mused upon this curious case And swore he’d change the pigtail’s place”
Actually this case neither has anythi g to worry about nor this is a curious case.But this sage worried about this for along time and gave an oath that he’d change the pigtail’s position,which is apparently impossible and very funny. This small thing is a serious problem for this wise man and this