There Was a Little Girl, And She Had a Little Curl

DESCRIPTION: "There was a little girl, and she had a little curl, Right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, she was very, very good, But when she was bad, she was horrid."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1885 (Sugar and Spice, And All That's Nice, according to Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes)
KEYWORDS: hair
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 186, "There was a little girl, and she had a little curl" (1 short text)
Baring-Gould-AnnotatedMotherGoose #827, p. 308, "(There was a little girl, and she had a little curl)"
Jack-PopGoesTheWeasel, p. 205, "There Was a Little Girl" (1 text)
Dolby-OrangesAndLemons, p. 36, "There Was a Little Girl Who Had a Little Curl" (1 text)
Roud #19671
NOTES [68 words]: The Opies mention both Thomas Bailey Aldrich and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow as possible authors, but they aren't convinced by either. (If Longfellow wrote it, he is responsible for only the first verse, but since that's the one most quoted, the distinction hardly matters.) Jack-PopGoesTheWeasel explains the uncertainty on the ground that he wasn't proud of the stanza and tried to hide its authorship. - RBW
Last updated in version 3.3
File: OO2186

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