Little Boy Blue

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This article is about a nursery rhyme. For the novel by Eddie Bunker, see Little Boy Blue (novel)

Little Boy Blue is a nursery rhyme with probable origins in the Middle Ages. Little Boy Blue was a hayward by profession.

[edit] Rhyme

Little boy blue, come blow your horn

The sheep's in the meadow, the cow's in the corn

Where is that boy who looks after the sheep?

"Under the haystack fast asleep"

Will you wake him? "Oh no, not I

For if I do he will surely cry"

[edit] Alternate versions

Many versions do not include the last two lines, ending the rhyme at "fast asleep."

[edit] References in popular culture

• L. Frank Baum wrote of Little Boy Blue (Poem) in his Mother Goose in Prose, depicting him as genuinely overworked supporting himself and his widowed mother. This story was later adapted by Jim Henson Productions.

• Eugene Field (1850 - 1895) wrote a poem entitled "Little Boy Blue" in the collection 'Poems of Childhood'.

• Little Boy Blue is also the name of a 1997 film about a dysfunctional rural family starring Ryan Phillippe and Nastassja Kinski.

• As Boy Blue, he is a prominent character in the Fables comic book series, in which he is Snow White's friendly assistant.

• Little Boy Blue was also the name of an obscure kid crime fighter from the 1940s created by DC Comics. A revamped version named Boy Blue appeared in the new Seven Soldiers series written by Grant Morrison.

• In the film The Picture of Dorian Gray (1949), based on Oscar Wilde's novel, the inscription "Little Boy Blue Come Blow Your Horn" appears embroidered on a towel on which Dorian Gray wipes his bloody hands after having killed Basil Hallward.

• "Little Boy Blue" is the name of a song by Australian band The Gyroreceptors.

• "Little Boy Blue" was also the name of a short animated film created in 1936. The film was also known as "The Big Bad Wolf" and was based on a film "The Big Bad Wolf" in 1934.

• Little Boy Blue was the target of an off-color joke by comedian Andrew Dice Clay. In one of several nursery rhyme parodies, Clay intones, "Little Boy blew. He needed the money."

• Little Boy Blue was one of the characters used in the "Fairy Tale Photo shoot" on the sixth cycle of America's Next Top Model

• Electric Light Orchestra has a song called "Boy Blue" off their 1974 album Eldorado.

• The Ed, Edd n Eddy episode Little Ed Blue's title is a parody of the poem's name.

• Harry Chapin uses the reference of Little Boy Blue on his hit song "Cat's in the Cradle"

• In the early 60's Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, from The Rolling Stones, formed a band called "Little Boy Blue, and the Blue Boys".

• Little Boy Blue was the name the townspeople of Chester, Nebraska, gave to a dead child in blue pajamas found in a cornfield on Christmas Eve, 1985. The case is the subject of a book by crime author Gregg Olsen. The boy's father was later identified as Amishman Eli Stutzman.

• The song "big six" by Judge Dread is also known as "little boy blue"

• Little Boy Blue was recently used as the basis for a short story in the annual for the 2007 Grimm Fairy Tales (comic series) by writer Christian Beranek and artist Siya.