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MP3 Recording of Little Boy Blue (Click to listen)

Another MP3 Recording of Little Boy Blue (Click to listen)

Another MP3 Recording of Little Boy Blue (Click to listen)

 

*Some versions have these last lines as:

Where's the little boy that looks after the sheep?
Under the haystack, fast asleep!

I found these additional lines in one version:

Will you wake him? No, not I;
For if I do, he'll be sure to cry.

They can be found in Children's Literature, A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes (1920) by Charles Madison Curry and Erle Elsworth Clippinger.

Here's another version from Mother Goose, The Original Volland Edition (1915), edited and arranged by Eulalie Osgood Grover and illustrated by Frederick Richardson:

Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn,
The sheep's in the meadow, the cow's in the corn.
What! Is this the way you mind your sheep,
Under the haycock fast asleep?

This version above can also be found in The Only True Mother Goose Melodies (Published and Copyrighted in Boston in 1833 by Munroe & Francis), with the illustrations below...

The Little Mother Goose (1912), illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith, puts some of the versions above together:

Little boy blue, come blow your horn;
The sheep's in the meadow, the cow's in the corn.
Where's the little boy that looks after the sheep?
He's under the hay-cock, fast a-sleep.
Will you wake him? No, not I;
For if I do, he'll be sure to cry.

Many thanks to Alix for contributing this nursery rhyme.

The first illustration comes from The National Nursery Book and the second is from Kate Greenaway's Mother Goose (1881). The 3rd illustration is from The Nursery Rhyme Book, edited by Andrew Lang and illustrated by L. Leslie Brooke (1897). The fourth illustration is from The Little Mother Goose (1912), illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith. 5th illustration is by H. Willebeck Le Mair from Our Old Nursery Rhymes (1911), arranged by Alfred Moffat.

1st mp3 sung by Ruth Golding and 2nd mp3 read by Allyson Hester of Athens, Georgia for Librevox.

3rd recording performed by 17 talented university student musicians who were sisters in the Sigma Alpha Iota International Music Fraternity for Women at California State University-Stanislaus in 2007. The musical score the recording is based on comes from Our Old Nursery Rhymes (1911) arranged by Alfred Moffat.

Alix translated this rhyme into French for her daughter Julia and sings it very slowly as if a lullaby.

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