Little Bo Peep [S. Worthen

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[Poll #1928956]

Last week in guitar class, it was news to me that "Little Bo Peep" had any tune at all. The other students were mildly astonished; they'd never known it without one.

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There are 29 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

My mother used to sing it to me, and I could reproduce it at need - but it's still a nursery rhyme first, for all that it comes with a tune. It ain't a song. There is apparently a clear difference in my head.

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I only learned last week it had any tune at all. It made learning guitar chords to go along with the tune extra-challenging, when I didn't know the tune it was going along with.

Interesting about the tune vs song distinction, even with words. Hmm.

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Thinking on it further - damn you for your questioning ways! - it occurs to me that there was at least conversation if not controversy when I was a kid, about whether it was "dragging" or "wagging". I'm fairly sure that "dragging" was the ur-text, at least for me; "wagging" may have come with the song. Or it may have made better sense to us, because lambs certainly do wag their tails, while no sheep of my acquaintance had anything big enough to drag (the notion of fat-tailed sheep was utterly unknown to us, an undiscovered country etc). Even so, I do now and I think I would then have stood by "dragging" as the proper version.

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Me too, from Texas but in a house full of English children's lit books.

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Mine too. Except I can't remember the first five notes!

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F, I think. All f-f-f-f-five of 'em.

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If it had been a straightforward C, I would have remembered! And now I sing five fs and lo, the tune follows.

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"Bringing their tails", I think. It's been a while...

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Now I think about it, I've heard that version too. Just not 'wagging'.

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I went totally blank on it at first, but yes, "bringing".

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Another vote for "bringing".

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Yes, bringing. Or possibly 'keeping'. Haven't heard dragging or wagging.

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Yep, I know 'keeping', although I only remembered after reading the comments.

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Yes, now you mention it, I'm pretty sure "bringing their tails" was the Listen With Mother version I learned as a child.

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To be more precise, "I've never heard the tune." Most nursery rhymes have been set to music at various points in the past. I've just not heard this one.

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In the cases that I know about, the tune came first and the words were put to it. A very large proportion come from the 18th century and are a good window into 18th century popular music

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That was my gut feeling too - Ride a cock horse is pretty much Lilibulero, after all. And some nursery rhymes started out as satire - The Grand Old Duke of York, for example.

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Apparently none of them started off as being for children; they were just songs that people knew that they sang to children, and this developed into a tradition even when the contemporary allusions were forgotten

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I shall remember this for next time I read Tristram Shandy.

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It's not exactly a tune to my ears, more of a singsongy rhythm.

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While I'm pretty sure it was 'wagging their tails...' in the version I learned, as a tiny I found it very confusing. I assumed the 'behind them' meant that the tails were no longer attached and were being dragged in a bag (or something.)

I guess as a very literal-minded child I was confused by the implication that the tails were something separate and not actually an integral part of them!

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Yes, it has a tune which is very firmly stuck in my head. I think sometimes they come home bringing their tails behind them.

Most nursery rhymes have tunes. Even if "Ride a cock horse" is pretty much "Lilibulero".

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Yes, bringing their tails, I remember. Always had a tune. Possibly something to do with the docking of lambs' tails? I think this is now banned in the UK but was certainly common practice where I grew up.

Edited Date: 2013-08-14 09:10 am (UTC)

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Lambs tails are still docked in most parts of the UK, apart from parts of Wales where the little native Welsh sheep have always kept their tails because they provide extra warmth in the winter. It's the docking of dogs' tails that is now illegal, apart from some exceptions for working dogs.

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The only tune I know in connection with it is Spike Jones' "Little Bo-Peep Has lost Her Jeep."

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You know...I don't know whether I grew up learning it with a tune or not. My memory has been subsumed by listening to English nursery rhyme songs with Ciaran, wherein it definitely DOES have a tune.

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I've answered "wagging" but I've also realised that it's the one word in the rhyme where I'm not certain of the wording - so I may well have met different words at different times.

And I wouldn't be surprised to find that there is an English/American (and possibly also a generational) divide about whether Little Bo Peep has a tune or not. From memory, on Listen with Mother, there was a nursery rhyme each day which was invariably (at least in the late '50s/early '60s) sung to a piano accompaniment by one of the presenters - and Little Bo Peep was one of the more common choices.

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I sort of vaguely felt like I had heard a tune once so I put best known to me without singing.

I could not remember the last half of the rhyme so I can't remember if I have heard it more as dragging or wagging or something else. I think I share with some other respondents the sense that when I heard the rhyme I imagined the tails being somehow separated from the lambs (strange macabre rhyme).

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It's amazing how diverse nursery rhymes can become in different areas.

While I'm aware of Little Bo Peep as a straight nursery rhyme, I definitely hear it in my head with a tune. Interestingly, though, having seen the two options you offered for the final line, I struggled to remember which one I'd use unprompted, as I've heard both. I'm pretty confident I got it after a few moments' thought, though.

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Little Bo Peep

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