Little Boy Blue
Little Boy Blue
Nursery Rhyme
Little Boy Blue,
Come blow your horn,
The sheep's in the meadow,
The cow's in the corn.
Where is the little boy
That tends the sheep?
He's under the haystack,
Fast asleep.*
Notes
*Some versions have these last lines as follows:
Where's the little boy that looks after the sheep?
Under the haystack, fast asleep!
I found these additional lines in one version:
Will you wake him? No, not I;
For if I do, he'll be sure to cry.
These versions can be found in Children's Literature, A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes (1920) by Charles Madison Curry and Erle Elsworth Clippinger.
Here's another version from Mother Goose, The Original Volland Edition (1915), edited and arranged by Eulalie Osgood Grover:
Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn,
The sheep's in the meadow, the cow's in the corn.
What! Is this the way you mind your sheep,
Under the haycock fast asleep?
This version above can also be found in The Only True Mother Goose Melodies (Published and Copyrighted in Boston in 1833 by Munroe & Francis), with the illustrations below...
Comments
The Little Mother Goose (1912), illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith, has this version:
Little boy blue, come blow your horn;
The sheep's in the meadow, the cow's in the corn.
Where's the little boy that looks after the sheep?
He's under the hay-cock, fast a-sleep.
Will you wake him? No, not I;
For if I do, he'll be sure to cry.
As you can hear in the mp3's below, there are minor variations of this rhyme.
1st mp3 sung by Ruth Golding and 2nd mp3 read by Allyson Hester of Athens, Georgia.
3rd recording performed by 17 talented university student musicians who were sisters in the Sigma Alpha Iota International Music Fraternity for Women at California State University-Stanislaus in 2007. The musical score the recording is based on comes from Our Old Nursery Rhymes (1911) arranged by Alfred Moffat.
Thanks and Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Alix for contributing this nursery rhyme.
The first illustration comes from "Favorite Nursery Rhymes" (1906), illustrated by Ethel Franklin Betts and the second is from Kate Greenaway's Mother Goose (1881). The 3rd illustration is from The Nursery Rhyme Book, edited by Andrew Lang and illustrated by L. Leslie Brooke (1897). The fourth illustration is from The Little Mother Goose (1912), illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith. 5th illustration is by H. Willebeck Le Mair from Our Old Nursery Rhymes (1911), arranged by Alfred Moffat.
Thanks so much!
