LITTLE Boy Blue,
Come blow your horn;
The sheep’s in the meadow,
The cow’s in the corn.
Where is the boy
Who looks after the sheep?
Under a haystack
Fast asleep.
Although the storyline of ‘Little Boy Blue’ sounds like a romantic reflection of idle country life, there’s far more to this rhyme than meets the eye.
The most widely credited theory about its origin is that Little Boy Blue is actually Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (c. 1470-1530), Lord Chancellor and Henry VIII’s right-hand man. During his time, Wolsey organized both the affairs of state and the Church with fulsome pomp and ceremony, building the ostentatious Hampton Court Palace for his own use in the process. His extravagance caused so much comment that he was also the subject of another lesser-known rhyme composed in the early 1530s:
Come ye to court! Which court?
The king’s court or Hampton Court?
Wolsey argued that there was no better place for a visiting nobleman, or even monarch, to arrive in England than on the banks of Hampton Court Palace. The king agreed and duly confiscated Hampton Court for his own use, stripping Wolsey of his office after the latter failed to obtain an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. But that is another story (see Old Mother Hubbard).
During his fourteen years in office, Wolsey commanded more power than any other Englishman and, though not quite of blue blood (Little Boy Blue), he wore the purple robes of a cardinal – the position making him more important even than the Archbishop of Canterbury – and was the Pope’s representative in England. His family crest also includes the faces of four blue leopards. Wolsey’s high-handed manner earned him many enemies, however, and his tendency to show off, or ‘blow his own trumpet’, alienated both the nobility and the common people. Also, as the man in charge of the Treasury and the Church, Wolsey was largely responsible for the economically important wool trade (see Baa, Baa, Black Sheep). So the rhyme could well be mocking his fall from grace: Little Boy Blue can no longer blow his [own] horn now that all his wealth and privilege have vanished away (The sheep’s in the meadow / The cow’s in the corn).
Another contender for Little Boy Blue is Charles II, who, despite being crowned king of Scotland on i January 1651, was prevented by Parliament from succeeding his father on to the English throne. Charles tried to make his presence felt by raising an army against England and travelling south but, on reaching Worcester, he was met by Cromwell’s forces and soundly defeated. Charles quickly escaped to France where, with a bounty of £1,000 on his head, he kept a low profile for the next nine years. While he was having the time of his life, drinking and gaming at the French and Dutch courts, the early years of the new English Commonwealth were rather less fun, almost every form of entertainment having been banned by the Puritans (see Ride a Cock Horse to Banbury Cross). The rhyme alludes to this period in which the rightful heir (Little Boy Blue) peacefully slept away his afternoons while the English nation was in disarray: the sheep would not have been in the meadow and the cows nowhere near the corn if a proper king had been in charge. In other words, England needed her ‘shepherd’ back.