Little Bo Peep

[owlfish]

[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.

Comments

[desperance.livejournal.com]

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.

[owlfish]

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.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

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.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

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

[gillpolack.livejournal.com]

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

[desperance.livejournal.com]

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

[gillpolack.livejournal.com]

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