"Little Bo-Peep" or "Little Bo-Peep has lost her sheep" is a popular
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 ...
nursery rhyme. It has a
Roud Folk Song Index number of 6487.
Lyrics and melody
As with most products of
oral tradition
Oral tradition, or oral lore, is a form of human communication wherein knowledge, art, ideas and cultural material is received, preserved, and transmitted orally from one generation to another. Vansina, Jan: ''Oral Tradition as History'' (1985) ...
, there are many variations to the rhyme. The most common modern version is:
:Little Bo-Peep has lost her
sheep
Sheep or domestic sheep (''Ovis aries'') are domesticated, ruminant mammals typically kept as livestock. Although the term ''sheep'' can apply to other species in the genus '' Ovis'', in everyday usage it almost always refers to domesticated ...
,
:and doesn't know where to find them;
:leave them alone, And they'll come home,
:wagging (bringing) their tails behind them.
[I. Opie and P. Opie, ''The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes'' (Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), pp. 93-4.]
![464249 Little-Bo-Peep](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/464249_Little-Bo-Peep.jpg)
Common variations on second-line include "And can't tell where to find them." The fourth line is frequently given as "Bringing their tails behind them",
or sometimes "Dragging their tails behind them". This alternative version is useful in the extended version, usually of four further stanzas. The melody commonly associated with the rhyme was first recorded in 1870 by the composer and nursery rhyme collector
James William Elliott
James William Elliott (J.W. Elliott) (1833 – 1915) was an English collector of nursery rhymes. Together with George Dalziel and Edward Dalziel
The Brothers Dalziel (pronounced ) was a prolific wood-engraving business in Victorian London, found ...
in his ''National Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Songs''.
Additional verses
![Little Bo Peep 1 - WW Denslow - Project Gutenberg etext 18546](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Little_Bo_Peep_1_-_WW_Denslow_-_Project_Gutenberg_etext_18546.jpg)
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.
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Origins and history
The earliest record of this rhyme is in a manuscript of around 1805, which contains only the first verse which references the adult Bo Peep , called 'Little' because she was short and not because she was young.[ There are references to a children's game called "bo-peep", from the 16th century, including one in Shakespeare's '']King Lear
''King Lear'' is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare.
It is based on the mythological Leir of Britain. King Lear, in preparation for his old age, divides his power and land between two of his daughters. He becomes destitute and insane ...
'' (Act I Scene iv), for which " bo-peep" is thought to refer to the children's game of peek-a-boo, but there's no evidence that the rhyme existed earlier than the 18th century.[ 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, published in London by Joseph Johnson.][
The phrase "to play bo peep" was in use from the 14th century to refer to the punishment of being stood in a pillory. For example, in 1364, an ale-wife, Alice Causton, was convicted of giving short measure, for which crime she had to "play bo peep thorowe a pillery". Andrew Boorde uses the same phrase in 1542, "". Nevertheless, connections with sheep are early; a fifteenth-century ballad includes the lines: " // In every corner they play boe-peep".]
Notes
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English nursery rhymes
Fictional sheep
Fictional shepherds
Songs about sheep
Songs about shepherds
Songs about fictional female characters
English folk songs
English children's songs
Traditional children's songs