"A Wise Old Owl" is an

English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...

nursery rhyme A nursery rhyme is a traditional poem or song for children in Britain and many other countries, but usage of the term dates only from the late 18th/early 19th century. The term Mother Goose rhymes is interchangeable with nursery rhymes. From t ...

. It has a

Roud Folk Song Index The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of around 250,000 references to nearly 25,000 songs collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world. It is compiled by Steve Roud (born 1949), a former librarian in the London ...

number of 7734 and in The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, 2nd Ed. of 1997, as number 394. The rhyme is an improvement of a traditional nursery rhyme "There was an owl lived in an oak, wisky, wasky, weedle."

Lyrics

This version was first published in ''

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'', April 10, 1875, and ran as follows.

There was an owl liv'd in an oak The more he heard, the less he spoke The less he spoke, the more he heard. O, if men were all like that wise bird.I. Opie and P. Opie, ''The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), p. 403.

One version was published upon bookmarks during the mid-1930s, and goes as follows:

A wise old owl lived in an oak, The more he saw, the less he spoke The less he spoke, the more he heard, Now, wasn't he a wise old bird?

History

The rhyme refers to the traditional image of

owl Owls are birds from the order Strigiformes (), which includes over 200 species of mostly solitary and nocturnal birds of prey typified by an upright stance, a large, broad head, binocular vision, binaural hearing, sharp talons, and feathers a ...

s as the symbol of wisdom. It was recorded as early as 1875 and is apparently older than that. It was quoted by

John D. Rockefeller John Davison Rockefeller Sr. (July 8, 1839 – May 23, 1937) was an American business magnate and philanthropist. He has been widely considered the wealthiest American of all time and the richest person in modern history. Rockefeller was ...

in 1909 and is frequently misattributed to Edward Hersey Richards and William R. Cubbage. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, the

United States army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...

used the rhyme on a poster with the tweaked ending, "Soldier.... be like that old bird!" with the caption "Silence means security."

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wise Old Owl, A American nursery rhymes English children's songs Traditional children's songs Fictional owls Songs about birds Songwriter unknown 1870s songs Year of song unknown