Little Bo Peep

"Little Bo Peep"
Roud #6487
Written by Traditional
Published c. 1805
Written England
Language English
Form Nursery rhyme

"Little Bo Peep" or "Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep" is a popular English language nursery rhyme. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 6487.

Contents

Lyrics

As with most products of oral tradition, there are many variations to the rhyme. The most common modern version is:

Little Bo-Peep has lost her sheep,
And can't tell where to find them;
Leave them alone, And they'll come home,
Wagging their tails behind them.[1]

Common variations on second line include "And doesn't know where to find them." The fourth line is frequently give as "And bring their tails behind them." This alternative version is useful in the extended version, usually of four further stanzas.

Additional verses

The following additional verses are often added to the rhyme:

Little Bo-peep fell fast asleep,
And dreamt she heard them bleating;
But when she awoke, she found it a joke,
For they were still a-fleeting.
Then up she took her little crook,
Determined for to find them;
She found them indeed, but it made her heart bleed,
For they'd left their tails behind them.
It happened one day, as Bo-peep did stray
Into a meadow hard by,
There she espied their tails side by side,
All hung on a tree to dry.
She heaved a sigh and wiped her eye,
And over the hillocks went rambling,
And tried what she could, as a shepherdess should,
To tack each again to its lambkin.[1]

Origins and history

The earliest record of this rhyme is in a manuscript of around 1805, which contains only the first verse.[1] There are references to a children's game called "Bo-Peep", from the sixteenth century, including one in Shakespeare's King Lear (Act I Scene iv), but little evidence that the rhyme existed.[1] The additional verses are first recorded in the earliest printed version in a version of Gammer Gurton's Garland or The Nursery Parnassus in 1810.[1]

Older inhabitants of Ninfield, East Sussex (a former smuggling center) will tell you that Bo-Peep was its most famous resident. The story goes that her sheep were walked across the shore to disguise smuggler's footprints. The valley to the south of the A269 in Ninfield joins the Pevensey Level marsh area and was small-boat navigable until the Late Middle Ages.

In literature

In O. Henry’s romantic story “Madame Bo-Peep, of the Ranches” Octavia Beaupree comes to the Rancho de las Sombras in Texas, the only real property she inherits after the bankruptcy and death of her husband, Colonel Beaupree. Her old friend and unsuccessful admirer Teddy Westlake who works at the ranch as a manager calls her by the name of Mother Goose's heroine, the Mexican workers call her “La Madama Bo-Peepy” and the ranch becomes known as “Madame Bo-Peep's ranch”. Finally, Octavia accepts Teddy’s proposal, he chants the first quatrain of the nursery rhyme, after the third line she draws his head down, whispers in his ear and the story ends with the words “But that is one of the tales they brought behind them.”

In popular culture

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e I. Opie and P. Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), pp. 93-4.