Little Boy Blue

This article is about the nursery rhyme. For other uses, see Little Boy Blue (disambiguation).

"Little Boy Blue" Roud #11318
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.

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.

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.

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.

References in popular culture

In stand up comedy:

• Andrew Dice Clay performed his own version of this popular nursery rhyme; it sounded like this: "Little boy blew; he needed the money".

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' about a boy dying in his sleep.
• 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 theatre and 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).
• Come Blow Your Horn is the title of Neil Simon's first play, produced in 1961, and the name of the film adaptation (1963).
• In the Dreamworks film Puss In Boots, Little Boy Blue is an orphan who grew up with the title character in an orphanage. He is a bully with blue skin.
• During Scrubs (TV series), the episode entitled My Big Move (season 4 episode 22) contained a scene with Ted playfully punching Janitor (who happened to be wearing a bright blue uniform) while saying "Little boy blue, blow your horn..."

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
• Blues pianist Otis Spann had a song titled "Little Boy Blue" on his debut album Otis Spann Is the Blues.
• Rockabilly guitarist Huelyn Duvall had a #88 hit record in 1958 with a song made out of the poem.
• 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 he sings,"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.
• Blaze Foley's song "Springtime in Uganda," which satirizes former Ugandan leader Idi Amin, features the lyrics: "Even his doggy has got syphilis too, if you were his doggy he'd give it to you. / The sheep's in the meadow, the cow's in the corn, he eats their babies as soon as they're born."
• John Prine's song "Quiet Man" references Little Boy Blue in the lyrics: "Last Monday night I saw a fight / Between Wednesday and Thursday over Saturday night. / Tuesday asked me what was going on. / I said, 'Sunday's in the meadow, and Friday's in the corn.'"

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.