Little Bo-peep

DESCRIPTION: Shepherdess Bo-peep can't find her sheep. When she finds them they are without their tails. One day she finds the tails hung on a tree to dry. She "tried what she could, as a shepherdess should, To tack again each to its lambkin"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1806 (Monthly Literary Recreations, according to Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes)
KEYWORDS: humorous talltale sheep shepherd injury dream
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber)) US(MW)
REFERENCES (9 citations):
Greig/Duncan8 1659, "Little Bo-Peep" (2 texts, 2 tunes)
McIntosh-FolkSongsAndSingingGamesofIllinoisOzarks, p. 107, "(The autumn is Bo-peep)" (1 short text, a game song, much changed from the standard version)
Heart-Songs, p. 207, "Little Bo-Peep" (1 text, 1 tune)
Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 66, "Little Bo-peep has lost her sheep" (1 text)
Baring-Gould-AnnotatedMotherGoose #112, p. 93, "(Little Bo-peep has lost her sheep)"
Jack-PopGoesTheWeasel, p. 100, "Little Bo Peep" (1 very full text)
Dolby-OrangesAndLemons, p. 73, "Little Bo-Peep" (1 text)
cf. DT, MERRYLND
ADDITIONAL: Tim Devlin, _Cracking Humpty Dumpty: An Investigative Trail of Favorite Nursery Rhymes_, Susak Press, 2022, pp. 71-75, "Little Bo-Peep" (1 text plus many variants and alternate sources)
Roud #6487
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Simon Brodie" (theme: animal returns by itself, with its tail "behind")
NOTES [541 words]: Before digging into the meaning of this, we should perhaps note that the term "bo-peep" did not originate with this rhyme. Onions, p. 107, defines it as a "game played by peeping from behind a hiding place and crying bo!" "Bo," according to p. 103, is essentially the word we usually now spell "boo," attested since the fifteenth century: a word designed to startle. Peep, according to p. 662, is to "utter a week shrill sound," and is also a fifteenth century word, used by Lydgate. Hence a bo-peep might be someone who can't make enough noise to get anyone's attention, and the loss of the sheep might be because they can't hear the shepherd.
Devlin, p. 73, mentions a woman who in 1364 was sentenced to "play bo pepe through a pillory," though without citing the exact source; still, it is clear that the phrase "bo-peep" is very old.
Shakespeare's King Lear uses the word. Act I, Scene IV has these lines, stated by the fool:
Then they for sudden joy did weep,
And I for sorrow sung,
That such a king should play bo-peep,
And go the [fools] among.
This is lines 175-178 in ShakespeareEvans (p. 1263. The reading "fools" is that of the first two quartos; the First Folio has "Foole"); other editions have slightly different line numbers (e.g. it's 176-179 in the Signet Shakespeare).
None of these are this poem, though; they're merely uses of the name.
The Baring-Goulds find no versions of the rhyme before the 1810 edition of Gammer Gurton's Garland, which is the first date they mention for this rhyme. No one seems to be able to trace the the rhyme itself earlier than this, either.
I'm amazed no one has tried to find a political interpretation. Were the piece earlier, one would be tempted to the English Civil War and Restoration. Or maybe the Stuart monarchy and the Jacobite rebellions. Given the early nineteenth century date, one thinks of the French Revolution, the guillotine, and perhaps Bonaparte's restoration of monarchy.
Or not. I don't really believe it. But it sounds so "folk-plausible." Even the name is right.... - RBW
Maybe "Little Bo-Peep" parodies a shorter song where the only verse is the first. Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes says, "Several of the verses are based on pieces that seem to have been current in the 1760s, amongst them:
Our Jemima's lost her Mare
And can't tell where to find her,
But she'll come trotting by and by
And bring her Tail behind her."
Also, see "Simon Brodie" where the animal -- always a cow, but sometimes also a dove -- does return. - BS
To my amazement, it seems my English Civil War suggestion has been anticipated. Jack-PopGoesTheWeasel mentions a suggestion that this is about smuggling in the time of Charles I (reigned 1625 until his execution in 1649). I still don't believe it, though. Dolby-OrangesAndLemons mentions a link to Mary Queen of Scots, which is equally implausible; it appears to to go back to the frankly addled ideas of Katherine Elwes Thomas (Thomas, pp. 188-196). But Devlin, pp. 74-75, mentions several other references to smuggling in connection with the song, and thinks that the most likely explanation.
Heart-Songs, p. 207, attributes this to J. W. Elliott, but I think that means either the tune or the arrangement, not the original text. - RBW
Bibliography

Devlin: Tim Devlin, Cracking Humpty Dumpty: An Investigative Trail of Favorite Nursery Rhymes, Susak Press, 2022
Onions: C. T. Onions, editor, with the assistance of G. W. S. Friedrichsen and R. W. Burchfield, The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford University Press, 1966
ShakespeareEvans: G. Blakemore Evans, textual editor, and others, The Riverside Shakespeare, Houghton Mifflin, 1974
Thomas: Katherine Elwes Thomas, The Real Personages of Mother Goose, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co., 1930

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File: OO2066

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