Baa Baa Black Sheep

DESCRIPTION: "Baa baa, black sheep, have you any wool?" The sheep replies that it does, and details what might be done with it
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: c. 1744 (Tom Thumb's Pretty Song Book)
KEYWORDS: animal sheep nonballad clothes
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (6 citations):
Baring-Gould-AnnotatedMotherGoose #16, p. 33, "(Bah, Bah a black Sheep)"
Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 55, "Baa, baa, black sheep" (1 text)
Jack-PopGoesTheWeasel, p. 8, "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep" (1 text)
Dolby-OrangesAndLemons, p. 96, "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep" (1 text)
Fuld-BookOfWorldFamousMusic, pp. 593-594, "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star -- (ABCDEFG; Baa, Baa, Black Sheep; Schnitzelbank)"
ADDITIONAL: Tim Devlin, _Cracking Humpty Dumpty: An Investigative Trail of Favorite Nursery Rhymes_, Susak Press, 2022, pp. 15-22, "Baa Baa Black Sheep" (3 texts)
Roud #4439
BROADSIDES:
LOCSheet, sm1871 10570, "Baa, baa, black sheep," G. D. Russell & Co (Boston), 1871; sm1881 04227, "Ba-a, ba-a, black sheep," Geo. Molineux? (unknown), 1881 (tune)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" (tune)
NOTES [431 words]: Although the lyrics of this are older than "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," and indeed are older than the oldest known form of the music ("Ah! Vous Dirai-Je, Maman," published 1761), text and tune, according to Fuld, were not united until 1879.
The 1881 sheet music credits this to C. M. Wiske, but I would suspect that is the arrangement. The 1871 sheet music is credited to Charles Moulton, but it's a different tune (don't ask me why everyone suddenly got the idea to set this to be music)
Katherine Elwes Thomas (who could always be relied upon to find expansive explanations when simple ones would do) reads this as a complaint against the exactions of the English royalty and nobility (Katherine Elwes Thomas, The Real Personages of Mother Goose, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co., 1930, pp. 85-86); it would appear she dates it to the reign of Henry VIII. This is one of her less ridiculous attributions, but I don't see any evidence for so dating it.
The Opies mention the taxes on the wool trade which began in 1275 -- and became one of the main sources of money for the Crown, so that might be the same reference. Albert Jacks also refer it to the reign of Edward I of England (1272-1307) and his 1275 imposition of a tax of six shillings and eight pence on a sack of wool. The argument is that one third of the price of the sack goes to the king ("master") and two-thirds to the church ("dame"), with none left for the actual growers of the wool ("the little boy who cries in the lane"). Tim Devlin, Cracking Humpty Dumpty: An Investigative Trail of Favorite Nursery Rhymes, Susak Press, 2002, pp. 17-21, offers probably the best historical review of this hypothesis and of the history thought to be behind it; he too refers it to the reign of Edward I although he puts it at a slightly different time in that reign.
Clearly the link to Edward I is popular. But to refer a poem seemingly first encountered in 1744 to a tax which was significant mostly in the period prior to the Reformation is something of a stretch, it seems to me. Nor is there any hint of Middle English, or Anglo-Norman, in the language. Note, in particular, that every version I've seen refers to *bags* of wool -- even though the official measure of wool was the *sack*. This is not a trivial distinction -- "sack" was a formal Anglo-Norman term.
Oh, and remember, Edward I's court spoke Anglo-Norman. So did the people who were exporting the wool. Middle English was the language of the lower classes. And most people who spoke Middle English spoke dialects that were not ancestral to Modern English! - RBW
Last updated in version 6.6
File: BGMG016

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