Lyrics
Little Boy Blue, come blow up your horn. The sheep's in the meadow, The cow's in the corn. But where is the boy who looks after the sheep? He's under the haystack, Fast asleep.
#Little Boy Blue at a glance
- Country of origin
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- Sung in
- English
- Words by
- Traditional
- First known
- c. 1744
- Best for ages
- 2–7
- Mood
- playful, traditional
- Last updated
- 25 July 2026
Meaning and origin
This is a small scene of a job not being done. Little Boy Blue is a herd-boy — the child set to watch the animals and blow a horn to warn when they wandered where they should not — and while he sleeps under the haystack, the sheep have drifted into the meadow and the cow into the corn. The rhyme catches him at the exact moment of his failure, and rather than scold him, it seems almost to sympathise with a tired child who could not stay awake.
It is an old rhyme, printed by about 1744 and probably older still. It is old enough, in fact, that Shakespeare appears to nod to it: in King Lear, a character disguised as a madman speaks of a shepherd and sheep in the corn, which reads like an echo of this very verse.
As usual, later readers tried to find a hidden figure behind the boy — one suggestion made him Cardinal Wolsey — but the great nursery-rhyme scholars, the Opies, dismissed that as unfounded. What remains is simpler and gentler: a horn unblown, a field of strayed animals, and a boy fast asleep where he should have been keeping watch.
Common questions
- How old is "Little Boy Blue"?
- The earliest printed version is in "Tommy Thumb's Little Song Book" of about 1744, though the rhyme may well be older.
- Who is the "boy who looks after the sheep"?
- He is a herd-boy — the child whose job was to watch the animals and blow a horn to warn when livestock strayed onto the crops. In the rhyme he has failed at exactly that: he is fast asleep under the haystack while the sheep get into the meadow and the cow into the corn.
- Is "Little Boy Blue" about a real person, like Cardinal Wolsey?
- An old idea that Little Boy Blue represented Cardinal Wolsey has been dismissed by scholars as unfounded. The rhyme is also old enough that Shakespeare seems to allude to it in "King Lear", where a character speaks of a shepherd and sheep in the corn.
