There is a nursery rhyme for every occasion. To wit, “Little Boy Blue” is a delightful ditty dedicated to those lazy employees who sleep on the job. Strange? Yes. Accurate? Also yes. Let’s dive in.
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The Meaning
Little Boy Blue is asleep again. And on his lazy watch, the sheep and the cows have gotten away from where they are supposed to be and they are eating the crops. This nursery rhyme and lullaby essentially says: YOU HAD ONE JOB!
The Lyrics
Let’s dive into the most common form of the rhyme below:
Little Boy Blue,
Come blow your horn,
The sheep’s in the meadow,
The cow’s in the corn.
Where’s The boy
Who looks after the sheep?
He’s under the haystack,
Fast asleep.
Will you wake him?
No, not I,
For if I do,
He’ll sure to cry.
Privilege
Not only has Little Boy Blue neglected his duties—gone off to sleep while he should be minding the sheep and cows—but he’s also protected. At least in the version above. When the speaker is asked if they will wake the slumbering boy, they respond by saying they will not. For, if he awakens, he’ll cry.
Digging deeper, the hidden meaning is that Little Boy Blue shouldn’t be undertaking this job. Maybe the speaker is at fault for having put someone on the job who doesn’t have the requisite maturity. Maybe this rhyme points a finger at the boss, not the employee. Though, the boy did have his own horn, which may point to some level of authority.
Origins and History
While scholars today have noted that the earliest version of the rhyme appears in Tommy Thumb’s Little Song Book from 1744, it is likely that the rhyme is much older. As with so many of these nursery rhymes and lullabies, the day they are published is likely the culmination of years of spoken word and word of mouth. In fact, some believe that the rhyme may be referenced in Shakespeare’s King Lear, which dates back to the early 1600s.
In that work, the character Edgar, who is pretending to be Mad Tom, says,
Sleepest or wakest thou, jolly shepherd?
Thy sheepe be in the corne;
And for one blast of thy minikin mouth
Thy sheepe shall take no harme
Final Thoughts
Some writers have argued that the nursery rhyme is about Cardinal Wolsey, a Catholic Bishop who lived from the mid-1400s to the mid-1500s. Those scholars say that Wolsey worked as a Hayward for his dad’s livestock. But others claim there is no evidence of this. (For those unaware, a Hayward is something of a handyman crossed with a shepherd. The job involves both the mending of fences and the caretaking of livestock.)
Again, as with most nursery rhymes that stand the test of time, it’s unlikely that “Little Boy Blue” subsisted for so long with connections to only one mildly well-known person of the time. Instead, there is a more ubiquitous meaning. There is also the connection to farms, which is a scene that always delights children, that helped the lyric last.
Everyone from here to the end of time understands the feeling of laziness, of being too tired or too uninterested in the job to perform it. That is the story of Little Boy Blue in so many quaint lines. That is why it’s lasted so long. It’s a part of us all.
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