MARY AND HER LAMB.
Reading edition
This is the title of one of the most familiar poems in the English language, but few people know its history.
Most of our young readers will be surprised to hear that the well-known nursery song of “Mary had a Little Lamb” is a true story, and that “Mary” is still living, says an exchange.
About seventy years ago she was a little girl, the daughter of a farmer in Worcester county, Mass. She was very fond of going with her father to the fields to see the sheep, and one day they found a baby lamb, which was thought to be dead.
Kind-hearted little Mary, however, lifted it up in her arms, and as it seemed to breathe she carried it home, made it a warm bed near the stove, and nursed it tenderly. Great was her delight when, after weeks of careful feeding and watching, her little patient began to grow well and strong, and soon after it was able to run about. It knew its young mistress perfectly, always came at her call, and was happy only when at her side.
One day it followed her to the village school, and not knowing what else to do with it, she put it under her desk and covered it with her shawl.
There it stayed until Mary was called up to the teacher’s desk to say her lesson, and then the lamb walked quietly after her, and the other children burst out laughing. So the teacher had to shut the little girl’s pet in the woodshed until school was out. Soon after this, a young student, named John Rollstone, wrote a little poem about Mary and her lamb and presented it to her. The lamb grew to be a sheep and lived for many years, and when at last it died Mary grieved so much for it that her mother took some of its wool, which was as “white as snow,” and knitted a pair of stockings for her, to wear in remembrance of her darling.
Some years after the lamb’s death, Mrs. Sarah Hall, a celebrated woman who wrote books, composed some verses about Mary’s lamb and added them to those written by John Rollstone, making the complete poem as we know it. Mary took such good care of the stockings made of her lamb’s fleece that when she was a grown-up woman she gave one of them to a church fair in Boston.
As soon as it became known that the stocking was made from the fleece of “Mary’s little lamb,” every one wanted a piece of it; so the stocking was raveled out, and the yarn cut into small pieces. Each piece was tied to a card on which “Mary” wrote her full name, and these cards sold so well that they brought the large sum of $140 in the Old South Church.—Our Sunday Afternoon.