Lamb

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Mary Sawyer. Like the rest of the boys and girls in Sterling, Massachusetts in the early 1800's, Mary went to school in a little red schoolhouse. One day, just for fun, Mary’s brother suggested that she take her pet lamb to school to show him to the rest of the children. Mary really should have known better. The lamb had no idea how to behave in a classroom. His antics thrilled the other children, but the teacher was less than amused. The minister’s nephew, a young man preparing to enter college, was visiting the schoolhouse that day. The following morning he presented Mary with the three original stanzas of a poem that began, “Mary had a little lamb whose fleece was white as snow.” The poem was set to music and published as a song in 1830.