"Little Bo-Peep has lost her sheep, / And can’t tell where to find them." It sounds innocent enough, doesn't it?
But like with many nursery rhymes, the meaning is much darker than most people suspect - even if the truth is hiding in plain sight.
You only have to glance over the lyrics to realise this sinister song is one parents probably shouldn't sing to their children.
While most of us will be familiar with the first verse of the rhyme from childhood, not everyone's read the lyrics in full. However, you might think twice about the song after doing so.
The fully nursery rhyme reads:
Little Bo-Peep has lost her sheep,
And can't tell where to find them;
Leave them alone, and they'll come home,
Bringing their tails behind them.
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 all 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 again each to its lambkin.
As Dr Oliver Tearle, a literary critic and lecturer in English at Loughborough University, points out in Interesting Literature: "It's hard to imagine children dancing around and clapping to its words about a poor shepherdess who loses her flock of sheep, only to discover their tails hanging somewhat gruesomely from a tree."
As you can see, it starts off playfully, but the end of the story is pretty grisly for children. So, where did it come from? Unfortunately, it is hard to know for certain, but there could be a sinister origin to the dark tale.
"As is the case with many famous nursery rhymes, the precise origins of 'Little Bo-Peep' are shrouded in mystery, and speculation concerning the 'true' meaning of the rhyme has not been lacking," Dr Tearle told the Mirror.
He adds that the words to the rhyme did not appear in print until the early nineteenth century. "It's possible they had a link with the baby game 'Bo-Peep', otherwise known as 'peekaboo'."
As to where the gruesome details concerning the tails came from, he says: "We cannot say for certain."
There has been lots of research into the rhyme's origin, nonetheless. One popular interpretation is that the lyrics refer to smugglers - and the tails represent loot.
Reacting to news that Little Bo-Peep might not be as sweet as many people think, one social media user said: "These old nursery rhymes are so spooky."
Meanwhile, another pointed out: "Most nursery rhymes have dark meanings."
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