BAA, BAA BLACK SHEEP
Baa, baa black sheep
Have you any wool
Yes, sir. Yes, sir.
Three bags full:
One for my master,
One for is dame,
And one for the little boy that lives
down the lane
The
meaning of the Rhyme:
As with many nursery rhymes, attempts
have been made to find origins and meanings for the rhyme. These include:
·
A description of the medieval ‘Great’ or ‘Old Custom’ wool
tax of 1275, which survived until the fifteenth century. Contrary to some
commentaries, this tax did not involve the collection of one third to the king,
and one third to the church, but a less punitive sum of 6s 8d to the Crown per
sack, about 5 per cent of the value. This theory also depends on the rhyme surviving
unrecorded and even unmentioned in extant texts for hundreds of years.
·
A connection to the slave trade. This explanation was
advances during debates over political correctness and the use and the reform
of nursery rhymes in the 1980s, but scholars agree that it has no basic in
fact.
Traditionally, the nursery rhyme,
Baa,Baa Black sheep, is seen as a complaint of the oppressed common people, the
“little boy who lives in the lane,” against the King, “my master” who took
their wool and against the oppressively wealthy nobility, “my dame”.
The most obvious historical incidence
of unrest among those oppressed by the Master and the Dame who collect all the
wool dates back to 1275 when Edward I imposed an export tax that allowed him to
collect a tax on any wool exported from any port in the country.
Additional History for the Rhyme :
The nursery rhyme, Baa,Baa,Black
Sheep, is over two-hundred years old. With the earliest known publication date
in 1744.
In 1888, the famous author, Rudyard
Kipling, used the nursery rhyme as the basis for a short story aptly title
“Baa,Baa,Black Sheep.”
When the rhyme was included in Mother
Goose’s Melody; the editor added the following moral which said “Bad habits are
easier conquered today than tomorrow.” One wonders what bad habits have to do
with the sheep and the recipients of his wool. Perhaps, the moral would have
had more impact if it read “Baaaahd habits.”
Why is the Sheep Black ?
Research did not turn up any
information regarding why the poor sheep is black. However, it seems doubtful
that black wool would be as desirable as white wool, which can be dyed to any
color.
Perhaps, it simply indicates the
subservient position of the serf (the black sheep) of whom the question was
asked.
It also recalls the proverbial black
sheep that every family has which would seem to indicate that the black sheep
would not be the most trustworthy person to question.
Linguistics :
The term “Baa,Baa,Black Sheep”
dialect has also been used informally in linguistics to describe varieties of
English tha allow the syntax “Have you any wool?” compare to the alternative
“Do you have any wool” with the auxiliary verb “do”. In the question “Have you
any wool ?” the verb “have” appears as a transitive verb with the sense of that
it undergoes syntactic inversion.
Sources :
Baring Gould, William S and Ceil. The
Annotated Mother Goose. Bramhall House, 1962. Christensen, James C.
Rhyme and Reasons an Annotated
Collectionof Mother Goose Rhymes. The Greenwhich Workshop Press, 1997.
