Little Boy Blue
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| "Little Boy Blue" Roud #11318 |
|
| Written by | Traditional |
|---|---|
| Published | c. 1744 |
| Written | England |
| Language | English |
| Form | Nursery Rhyme |
'Little Boy Blue' is a popular English language nursery rhyme, often used in popular culture. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 11318.
Contents |
[edit] Lyrics
The most common version of the rhyme is:
Little Boy Blue,
- Come blow your horn,
The sheep's in the meadow,
- The cow's in the corn;
Where is that boy
- Who looks after the sheep?
Under the haystack
- Fast asleep.
Will you wake him?
- Oh no, not I,
For if I do
- He will surely cry.
Some versions do not include the last two lines.
Older versions include:
Little Boy Blue,
- Come blow your horn,
The sheep's in the meadow,
- The cow's in the corn;
But where is the boy
- Who looks after the sheep?
He's under a haycock,
- Fast asleep.
Will you wake him?
- No, not I,
For if I do,
- He's sure to cry.[1]
[edit] Origins and meaning
The earliest printed version of the rhyme is in Tommy Thumb's Little Song Book (c. 1744), but the rhyme may be much older. It may be alluded to in Shakespeare's King Lear (III, vi) when Edgar, masquerading as Mad Tom, says:
Sleepest or wakest thou, jolly shepheard?
- Thy sheepe be in the corne;
And for one blast of thy minikin mouth
- Thy sheepe shall take no harme.[1]
It has been argued that Little Boy Blue was intended to represent Cardinal Wolsey, who was the son of an Ipswich butcher, who may have acted as a hayward to his father's livestock, but there is no corroborative evidence to support this assertion.[1]
[edit] References in popular culture
In literature:
- L. Frank Baum wrote of Little Boy Blue in his Mother Goose in Prose, depicting him as genuinely overworked supporting himself and his widowed mother. This story was later adapted by Jim Henson Productions.
- Eugene Field (1850 - 1895) wrote a poem entitled "Little Boy Blue" in the collection 'Poems of Childhood'.
- Little Boy Blue is the title of a semi-autobiographical 1981 novel by Edward Bunker about a juvenile delinquent.
- Little Boy Blue was the second victim in The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse (2002) by Robert Rankin.
- Little Boy Blue was recently used as the basis for a short story in the annual for the 2007 Grimm Fairy Tales (comic series) by writer Christian Beranek and artist Siya.
In radio drama:
- Little Boy Blue was also referenced in "The Nursery Rhyme Murders", an episode of the classic 1930's radio drama "The Shadow"
In film:
- In the film The Picture of Dorian Gray (1949), based on Oscar Wilde's novel, the inscription "Little Boy Blue Come Blow Your Horn" appears embroidered on a towel on which Dorian Gray wipes his bloody hands after having killed Basil Hallward
- "Little Boy Blue" is also the name of a song written by Tom Waits and sung by Nastassja Kinski in the film One from the Heart directed by Francis Ford Coppola in 1982. The song starts "Little Boy Blue Come Blow Your Horn" but continues "The dish ran away with the spoon; Home again, home again Saturday morn; He never gets up before noon".
- Little Boy Blue is one of the poems Donald Duck tries to recite in the Mickey Mouse cartoon, Orphan's Benefit (1934).
In Comics:
- Little Boy Blue was also the name of an obscure kid crime fighter from the 1940s created by DC Comics. A revamped version named Boy Blue appeared in the new Seven Soldiers series written by Grant Morrison.
- Boy Blue is a character in the Vertigo comic series Fables by Bill Willingham.
In popular music:
- Legendary bluesman Sonny Boy Williamson II was nicknamed Little Boy Blue
- In the early 60's Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, from The Rolling Stones, formed a band called "Little Boy Blue, and the Blue Boys".
- Electric Light Orchestra has a song called "Boy Blue" off their 1974 album Eldorado.
- Harry Chapin uses the reference of Little Boy Blue on his hit song "Cat's in the Cradle"
- The song "big six" by Judge Dread is also known as "little boy blue"
- "Little Boy Blue" is the name of a song by Australian band The Gyroreceptors.
- The Emmylou Harris song "Time in Babylon" (2003) beseeches a Little Boy Blue to tend his wayward flock and let his "song of healing spark a way out of this dark, lead us to a higher and a holy ground".
In the history of crime:
- Little Boy Blue was the name the townspeople of Chester, Nebraska, gave to a dead child in blue pajamas found in a cornfield on Christmas Eve, 1985. The case is the subject of a book by crime author Gregg Olsen. The boy's father was later identified as Amishman Eli Stutzman.
