24 メリーさんのひつじ、出版♪

1830年5月24日に、童謡「メリーさんのひつじ」出版♪

表紙／初版

童謡「メリーさんのひつじ」は、サラ・ジョセファ・ヘイルによるオリジナルの詩としてボストンの出版社から発行された。この詩は、実際のできごとに基づいている♪

保存されているメリー・ソーヤが通っていた学校／マサチューセッツ

教室内

メリー・ソーヤー（Mary Sawyer）という少女が羊をペットとして飼っていたが、ある日、兄弟に勧められて学校に連れて行き、大騒ぎになってしまった。メリーは、それを見て喜んだジョン・ルールストンという学生から、翌日、3つの節のこの詩の原型が書かれた紙を手渡されたと述懐している♪

"Mary Had a Little Lamb" is an English language nursery rhyme of nineteenth-century American origin. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 7622.

The nursery rhyme was first published by the Boston publishing firm Marsh, Capen & Lyon, as an original poem by Sarah Josepha Hale on May 24, 1830, and was inspired by an actual incident.

As a young girl, Mary Sawyer (later Mary Tyler) kept a pet lamb that she took to school one day at the suggestion of her brother. A commotion naturally ensued. Mary recalled: "Visiting school that morning was a young man by the name of John Roulstone, a nephew of the Reverend Lemuel Capen, who was then settled in Sterling. It was the custom then for students to prepare for college with ministers, and for this purpose Roulstone was studying with his uncle. The young man was very much pleased with the incident of the lamb; and the next day he rode across the fields on horseback to the little old schoolhouse and handed me a slip of paper which had written upon it the three original stanzas of the poem..."

There are two competing theories on the origin of this poem. One holds that Roulstone wrote the first four lines and that the final twelve lines, less childlike than the first, were composed by Sarah Josepha Hale; the other is that Hale was responsible for the entire poem.

The Redstone School, which was built in 1798, was purchased by Henry Ford and relocated to a churchyard on the property of Longfellow's Wayside Inn in Sudbury, Massachusetts.