Little Bo Peep
Nursery Rhyme from Mother Goose

Little Bo Peep nursery rhyme

First appearance in print: 1805

Fact: References to a children's game called "Bo-Peep" are made in Shakespeare's King Lear

Vocabulary

• bleating, the sound sheep make
• crook, a cane with a curve at the top, to help walking uneven terrain
• espied, spotted visually

Humor: The first stanza urges us not to worry, that Little Bo Peep's lost sheep will inevitably return, bringing "their tails behind them." Instead, they actually leave their tails behind!

Little Bo-Peep has lost her sheep,
And can't tell where to find them;
Leave them alone, and they'll come home,
And bring their tails behind them.

Little Bo-Peep fell fast asleep,
And dreamt she heard them bleating;
But when she awoke, she found it a joke,
For still they all were 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 all their tails behind 'em!

It happened one day, as Bo-peep did stray
Unto 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 she raced;
And tried what she could, as a shepherdess should,
That each tail should be properly placed.

The Little Bo Peep nursery rhyme appears in Blanche Fisher Wright's classic The Real Mother Goose collection.

More Mother Goose nursery rhymes.

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