owlfish: (Fishy Circumstances)
S. Worthen ([personal profile] owlfish) wrote2013-08-14 12:45 am
Entry tags:

Little Bo Peep

[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.

[identity profile] desperance.livejournal.com 2013-08-14 12:09 am (UTC)(link)
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.

[identity profile] houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com 2013-08-14 02:13 am (UTC)(link)
Me too, from Texas but in a house full of English children's lit books.