Bah, Bah, Black Sheep

Bah, Bah, Black Sheep

Original Text
Mother Goose's Melody: A facsimile reproduction of the earliest known edition, ed. W. F. Prideaux (London: A. H. Bullein, 1904): 59. DeLury Collection F, Fisher Rare Book Library. The original is Mother Goose's Melody: or, Sonnets for the Cradle (London: Francis Power, 1791).
2    Have you any wool?
3Yes, marry have I,
4    Three bags full;
5One for my master,
6    One for my dame,
7But none for the little boy
8Who cries in the lane.

Notes

1] Cf. The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, ed. Iona and Peter Opie (1951; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), no. 55, p. 88, whose version, based on Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book (1744), ends "And one for the little boy / Who lives down the lane." Back to Line
Publication Start Year
1744
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
RPO 1998.
Rhyme