Lorne, for me it's not that the riddles are boring; I learned the riddle song being discussed because I love the beautiful language. It's just that the answers to these riddles (particularly the chicken that's pipping) don't seem to make sense...

On a side note (creep creep), when I first tried to decipher the words off of an old recording, I thought it was "a chicken when it's bitten has no bones." I had this image of some young lover regurgitating mouthfuls of chickens as part of his courting ritual. I realized after a few more listens that the chicken was pipping, but, having seen bony new-hatched chicks, that presented a whole new dilemma.

It makes sense to me that some riddle answers have been bowdlerized.