Little Boy Blue

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"Little Boy Blue"
Roud #11318
Denslow-little-boy-blue2.jpg
1901 illustration by William Wallace Denslow
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 stand up comedy:

In literature:

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 theatre and film:

In Comics:

In popular music:

  • Legendary bluesman Sonny Boy Williamson II was nicknamed Little Boy Blue
  • Blues pianist Otis Spann had a song titled "Little Boy Blue" on his debut album Otis Spann Is the Blues.
  • 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.
  • Cyndi Lauper has a song called "Boy Blue" off her 1986 album True Colors.
  • 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".
  • "Who Made Little Boy Blue?" was a popular song in 1934 recorded by at least nine British dance bands, notably Elsie Carlisle with Ambrose.
  • Bonnie 'Prince' Billy has two songs called "Little Boy Blue I" and "Little Boy Blue II" (which can be found on the album Little Lost Blues). In the first one however, he makes more of a Grimm-story of it ("Well, I'm knocking on the door of your heart my dear, like the three little pigs you have it locked with fear, not huffin' and a-puffin' like the others do, I'm not a big bad wolf, just a little boy blue").
  • Rufus has a song called "Little Boy Blue" off their 1975 album Rufus featuring Chaka Khan.

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.

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c I. Opie and P. Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), pp. 98-9.
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