thumb|The rhyme as illustrated by [[Dorothy M. Wheeler]]
"Baa, Baa, Black Sheep" is an English nursery rhyme, the earliest printed version of which dates from around 1744. The words have barely changed in two and a half centuries. It is sung to a variant of the 18th-century French melody "Ah! vous dirai-je, maman".
Modern version
The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes gives this modern version:
The rhyme is a single stanza in trochaic metre, common in nursery rhymes and relatively easy for younger children. The Roud Folk Song Index classifies the song as 4439; variants have been collected across Great Britain and North America.
Melody
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The rhyme is sung to a variant of the 18th-century French melody "Ah! vous dirai-je, maman",
The text was translated to Swedish by August Strindberg for "Barnen i skogen" (1872), a Swedish edition of "Babes in the Wood". To this Swedish text, a melody was written by Alice Tegnér for publication in the songbook Sjung med oss, Mamma! (1892). "Bä, bä, vita lamm", in which the black sheep is replaced with a white lamb, has become one of the most popular Swedish children's songs.
Origin and meaning
thumb|upright=1.3|Illustration for the rhyme from [[Mother Goose's Melody, first published c. 1765]]
The rhyme was first printed in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book of about 1744, with words very similar to the modern version: