"If wishes were horses, beggars would ride" is a proverb and nursery rhyme, first recorded about 1628 in a collection of Scottish proverbs, which suggests if wishing could make things happen, then even the most destitute people would have everything they wanted. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 20004.
Lyrics Common newer versions include:
And also:
A shorter variant:
A variant intended to be humorous:
Origin The first recognizable ancestor of the rhyme was recorded in William Camden's (1551–1623) Remaines of a Greater Worke, Concerning Britaine, printed in 1605, which contained the lines: "If wishes were thrushes beggars would eat birds".G. L. Apperson and M. Manser, Wordsworth Dictionary of Proverbs (Wordsworth, 2003), p. 637. The reference to horses was first in James Carmichael's Proverbs in Scots printed in 1628, which included the lines: "And wishes were horses, pure [poor] men wald ride". The first mention of beggars is in John Ray's Collection of English Proverbs in 1670, in the form "If wishes would bide, beggars would ride". The first versions with close to today's wording was in James Kelly's Scottish Proverbs, Collected and Arranged in 1721, with the wording "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride". The rhyme above was probably the combination of two of many versions and was collected by James Orchard Halliwell in the 1840s.
Notes