Little Boy Blue
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This article is about a nursery rhyme. For the novel by Eddie Bunker, see Little Boy Blue (novel)
Little Boy Blue is a nursery rhyme with probable origins in the Middle Ages. Little Boy Blue was a hayward by profession.
[edit] Rhyme
- Little boy blue, come blow your horn.
- The sheep's in the meadow, the cow's in the corn.
- Where's the boy who looks after the sheep?
- Under the haystack, fast asleep.
- Will you wake him? No, not I
- For if I do he's sure to cry.
[edit] Alternate versions
Many versions do not include the last two lines, ending the rhyme at "fast asleep." Small variances include using "haycock" instead of "haystack", opening the third line with "But", adding the word "little" ("Where's the little boy"), replacing "who" with "that", and "looks after" with "tends". In the fourth line, opening with "He's", and replacing "the" with "a". As with much oral tradition, there is no standard version.
[edit] References in popular culture
- L. Frank Baum wrote of Little Boy Blue in his Mother Goose in Prose, depicting him as genuinely overworked supporting himself and his widowed mother. This story was later adapted by Jim Henson Productions.
- Little Boy Blue is also the name of a 1997 film about a dysfunctional rural family starring Ryan Phillippe and Nastassja Kinski.
- As Boy Blue, he is a prominent character in the Fables comic book series, in which he is Snow White's friendly assistant.
- Little Boy Blue was also the name of an obscure kid crime fighter from the 1940s created by DC Comics. A revamped version named Boy Blue appeared in the new Seven Soldiers series written by Grant Morrison.
- In the film The Picture of Dorian Gray (1949), based on Oscar Wilde's novel, the inscription "Little Boy Blue Come Blow Your Horn" appears stitched (?) on a towel on which Dorian Gray
Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.wipes his bloody hands after having killed Basil Hallward.
- "Little Boy Blue" is the name of a song by Australian band The Gyroreceptors.
- Little Boy Blue was the target of an off-color joke by comedian Andrew Dice Clay. In one of several nursery rhyme parodies, Clay intones, "Little Boy blew. He needed the money."
- Little Boy Blue was one of the characters used in the "Fairy Tale Photoshoot" on the sixth cycle of America's Next Top Model
- Electric Light Orchestra has a song called "Boy Blue" off their 1974 album Eldorado.
- Harry Chapin uses the reference of Little Boy Blue on his hit song "Cat's in the Cradle"
