"Mary Had a Little Lamb" is an English language nursery rhyme of nineteenth-century American origin. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 7622.
Mary and lamb at school, according to Denslow
Background
The nursery rhyme was first published (as opposed to written) as an original poem by Sarah Josepha Hale on May 24, 1830, and was inspired by an actual incident.
As a girl, Mary Sawyer (later Mrs. Mary Tyler) kept a pet lamb, which she took to school one day at the suggestion of her brother. A commotion naturally ensued. Mary recalled:
- "Visiting school that morning was a young man by the name of John Roulstone, a nephew of the Reverend Lemuel Capen, who was then settled in Sterling. It was the custom then for students to prepare for college with ministers, and for this purpose Mr. Roulstone was studying with his uncle. The young man was very much pleased with the incident of the lamb; and the next day he rode across the fields on horseback to the little old schoolhouse and handed me a slip of paper which had written upon it the three original stanzas of the poem..."[1]
There are two competing theories on the origin of this poem. One holds that Roulstone wrote the first four lines and that the final twelve lines, more moralistic and much less childlike than the first, were composed by Sarah Josepha Hale; the other is that Hale was responsible for the entire poem.
Mary Sawyer's house, located in Sterling, Massachusetts, was destroyed by arson on August 12, 2007.[2] A statue representing Mary's Little Lamb stands in the town center. The Redstone School, which was built in 1798, was purchased by Henry Ford and relocated to a churchyard on the property of Longfellow's Wayside Inn in Sudbury, Massachusetts.
Text
Song
In the 1830s, Lowell Mason set the nursery rhyme to a melody adding repetition in the verses:
Mary had a little lamb,
little lamb, little lamb,
Mary had a little lamb,
whose fleece was white as snow.
And everywhere that Mary went,
Mary went, Mary went,
and everywhere that Mary went,
the lamb was sure to go.
It followed her to school one day
school one day, school one day,
It followed her to school one day,
which was against the rules.
It made the children laugh and play,
laugh and play, laugh and play,
it made the children laugh and play
to see a lamb at school.
And so the teacher turned it out,
turned it out, turned it out,
And so the teacher turned it out,
but still it lingered near,
And waited patiently about,
patiently about, patiently about,
And waited patiently about
till Mary did appear.
"Why does the lamb love Mary so?"
Love Mary so? Love Mary so?
"Why does the lamb love Mary so,"
the eager children cry.
"Why, Mary loves the lamb, you know."
The lamb, you know, the lamb, you know,
"Why, Mary loves the lamb, you know,"
the teacher did reply.
In popular culture
In music:
- Thomas Edison recited the first stanza of this poem to test his invention of the phonograph in 1877, making this the second audio recording to be successfully made and played back. In 1923, Edison's friend Henry Ford moved a building to the grounds of the Wayside Inn from Sterling, Massachusetts, which he believed was the original schoolhouse mentioned in this poem.
- Chubby Checker's first hit, "The Class", featured vocal impressions of the song as it would be performed by Elvis Presley, the Chipmunks, Cozy Cole, and his own near-namesake, Fats Domino.
- Paul McCartney and Wings released a version of the song, with a new melody by McCartney, as a single in 1972.
- British Glam-rock band Slade used a reference to this rhyme on their song "Did yer mama ever tell ya".
- The nu metal band, Korn, used this rhyme in their song "Shoots and Ladders" which talks about the supposed sinister meaning behind nursery rhymes.
- Blues artist Buddy Guy combined it with elements from other nursery school rhymes. This version of the song was later covered by fellow bluesman Stevie Ray Vaughan on his album Texas Flood.
- The alternative rock band Smashing Pumpkins included a variation of this nursery rhyme in their song X.Y.U. from their album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, with the lines "Mary had a little lamb/Her face was white as snow/And everywhere that Mary went/I was sure to go/Now Mary's got a problem/And Mary's not a stupid girl/Mary's got some deep shit/Mary does not forget..."
- Mark Alburger's "Mary Variations" (1985) transform the tune into a Chinese pentatonic scale, an Indian raga, the Dies Irae, a medieval isorhythm, "Sumer Is Icumen In", and the music of Claudio Monteverdi, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Scott Joplin, Igor Stravinsky, 12-bar blues, Sergei Prokofiev, Aaron Copland, Duke Ellington, Olivier Messiaen, John Cage, Terry Riley, Sting, and John Barry.
- The song is part of the Nursery Rhymer Instrumental heard on a Raffi album Rise and Shine.
- Otis Redding also sung in 1963 his memorable "Mary had a little lamb" which is one of most well-known standards of soul music.
In science fiction:
- The rhyme has been used as an archetypal mantra against telepathy, featured in Babylon 5 and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Focusing on the rhyme helps shield one's thoughts from intrusion. Also, a modified version was used as a passphrase in Racing Mars, an episode of Babylon 5: "Lyta had a little Vorlon/her skin was pale as snow./Everywhere that Lyta went/the Vorlon was sure to go."
In T.V.:
- The Histeria! episode "Writers of the Purple Prose" featured a poem titled Mary Had a Little Lamb 2000, in which Mary (played by Susanna Susquahanna) has her lamb cloned, lampooning the controversy of Dolly the Sheep.
- In The Simpsons episode "'Round Springfield", Homer Simpson hums the song when he criticizes jazz musicians.
- In the Pingu episode Pingu and the lost ball. It plays as the Main episode's music.
- In the Goosebumps episode Calling all Creeps Wart forces Ricky to sing Mary had a little lamb
In sport:
In Video Games
- In Manx TT Superbike. during the sheep mode cheat. A remixed version of Mary Had a Little Lamb plays.
In film:
In computers:
- A popular version among the Lisp community says "Mary had a little lambda/Its syntax white as snow/And every program Mary wrote/She wrote in Lisp, you know."[3]
Media
Note: This melody is the British version, which is slightly different from the American version.
References
