I've often wondered about the process of pickling on the vine, so to speak. There was a joke that almost got the comic strip Bloom County kicked of of many a comic page that involved a nun and a pickle and it seems that it may have resonated with an old line about doing pushups in a field.

A peck is a dry measure equal to 8 quarts (537.605 cubic inches) or 8.810 liters. This is one quarter of a bushel. That would be a lot of normal supermarket size jars, but perhaps if he got them at the SuprValuBulkMart he got them in an 8 quart jug.

The American pumpkin is quite a different breed from the European beast of the same name (See The Pumpkinification of Claudius by Seneca http://www.gmu.edu/departments/fld/CLASSICS/sen.apoc.html)

Some of the larger examples of the American pumpkin are quite large enough to stuff a comfortable sized woman into.

Which fits the version of the Peter Peter i learned as a child-- european based, with smaller punpkins.

Peter Peter, pumpkin eater
had a wife and couldn't keep 'er
had another, but couldn't love her
and up a chimney he he did shove 'er.

in late childhood i also learned "fractured" nursery rhymes, like:
(Hold both arms akimbo)
I'm a little tea pot, short and stout
here is my handle, (look to your right arm)
here is my sp... (look to your left arm)
Oh shit, i am a sugar bowl!

F, all I get at your link is in Latin, so I can't share the humor. Care to translate a bit?

I believe the word-record pumpkin was something over 500 pounds. One year's Halloween we put a 325-pounder at our doorstep, which was truly a .

It was customary, in the early Empire, for deceased Emporers to be voted God status by the Senate (Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus AKA Caligula, "Little Boots" was one who had the posthumous honor conferred upon him prehumously). This process was known by the Greek word apotheosis. Claudius stuttered and from his lips apotheosis would have sounded something like apocolocyntosis (the th in apotheosis was not pronounced like the Germanic þ, a sound not present in Classical Greek or Latin). A reasonable translation of apocolocyntosis would be "pumpkinification". The Seneca work was a spoof on the eulogistic works accompanying imperial deaths, playing on both Claudius's speech defects and his physical appearance. He had polio as a youth and was highly developed in his arms and shoulders but withered in his legs.

You could google "apocolocyntosis" I don't believe that the word is used in any other context.

Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater,
Had a wife and couldn't keep her,
Put her in a pumpkin shell,
And there he kept her very well.

That's the one I learned ... but ... couldn't "keep her?"
Meaning he could not provide for her ... or was she up to something she shouldn't ought to be?

i've always thought "he couldn't keep her" meant she keep straying (just how? wandering away or gone off to play?) because he didn't have enough dough ray me..

so he couldn't keep her (at home, at her chores) because he couldn't keep her (in satins and silks, with maids and other other luxuries.)

but until i was 12 or so, i didn't realize that the dirty magazine in:
Ink a bink, a bottle of ink, the cork fell out and you stink
Not because you're dirty, not because you're clean,
just because you kissed a boy, behind a dirty magazine!

meant an X rated magazine, and not one that some one had dropped on the sidewalk, and had been left out in the rain, and run over by the bus..
amazing isn't in? there once was a time when i was was pure in thought, and in deed!
the red is a counting out song.. like eeny, meeny, miney, mo....

Ink a bink, a bottle of ink, the cork fell out and you stink
Not because you're dirty, not because you're clean,
just because you kissed a boy, behind a dirty magazine! (because this started out to be a pumpkin-based thread)

Interesting. I learned that one in the Bronx ca. 1947 and it was just a plain ol' magazine then. Scanned better that way, too.

Ackshually, it started as a pepper thread!
http://www.pepperjoe.com/cgi-bin/web_store/web_store.cgi?page=seeds.html&cart_id=2668472_13990
For all you ever need to know about peppers. Notice it IS a .com but I am not trying to sell you peppers, OK?

How many Peter peppers might Peter Piper pick, she ponders?
As long as he doesn't wipe his eyes or otherwise contaminate other mucous membranes with the oils from the peppers. I know from experience. ¡Ay, Chihuahua!

Hi of and wof:

Here's an Aussie variation on the first line only:

Ink, pink, pen and ink,
I smell a great big stink
And it comes from Y O U.

(first recorded in Adelaide 1935 -- from "Cinderella dressed in yella")

Dear Paul, the way you addressed the above post struck me so strongly that I had go up and search, to figure out who you were referring to. The words "of and wof" just look to me as though they have to be pronounced
off 'n woff. Oh, the strange paths our minds lead us down (well, mine, anyway, right, Plutarch?).

http://wordsmith.org/board/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=announcements&Number=18802&page=&view=&sb=&vc=1