Little Bo Peep is a popular traditional English nursery rhyme. Although little is known about the song’s origin, James William Elliott first recorded the melody commonly used to sing it in his book National Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Songs.
Little Bo Peep commonly has only one stanza or verse, though some variations add four more.
It is an entertaining song to sing for children to teach them about the importance of caring for animals.
Lyrics for Little Bo Peep
Here are the lyrics to the most common one-verse version:
Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep,
and doesn’t know where to find them;
Leave them alone, and they’ll come home,
wagging their tails behind them
The following verses are sometimes added to the song:
Little Bo-Peep fell fast asleep,
and dreamt she heard them bleating;
but when she awoke, she found it a joke,
for they were still a-fleeting.
Then up she took her little crook,
determined for to find them;
She found them indeed, but it made her heart bleed,
for they’d left their tails behind them.
It happened one day, as Bo-Peep did stray
into a meadow hard by,
There she espied their tails side by side,
all hung on a tree to dry.
She heaved a sigh and wiped her eye,
and over the hillocks went rambling,
and tried what she could, as a shepherdess should,
to tack each again to its lambkin.
