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Did Mary really have a little lamb? The strange story behind the world-famous nursery rhyme

Did Mary really have a little lamb? The strange story behind the world-famous nursery rhyme

The lyrics of the popular nursery rhyme are based on a real girl, a real lamb and a real visit to school, but there is some contention over which is the true origin

Vintage Art Deco style storybook illustration of a young girl in an orange dress and cloche hat holding a book and gesturing back to a small white lamb following her along a path.

Jonny Wilkes

Published: October 28, 2026 at 3:00 PM

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Sarah Josepha Hale was a pioneering writer and magazine editor, and the ‘mother of Thanksgiving’ for helping to establish it as a national holiday. In 1839, she published her book, Poems for Our Children, with the aim of teaching moral lessons through simple, enjoyable rhymes.

One such verse was about a girl named Mary. She had a little lamb with fleece as “white as snow” that followed her everywhere, including one day to school. Although it made the children “laugh and play”, the teacher turned the lamb out of the class, only for it to wait patiently outside for Mary. The poem ends with the teacher telling the children that they too could have such a devoted creature if they acted kindly to all animals.

‘Mary’s Lamb’ became a favourite among children and then when Hale’s words were put to music by the prolific composer Lowell Mason, a beloved nursery rhyme, Mary had a little lamb. (Although, Mason’s version would not be familiar to us today; the nursery rhyme was adapted later to the now-recognisable tune, based on a minstrel song titled Goodnight, Ladies.)

Historical engraved oval portrait of a 19th-century woman with dark ringlets and a bonnet headband, seated in an armchair with a lace collar and brooch

A portrait of Sarah Josepha Hale, c1830. A pioneering writer, she created the popular poem 'Mary's Lamb' | Credit: Getty Images

Moreover, Hale’s poem would find another place in the history books in 1877 as the first audio recorded on the phonograph, the latest invention by Thomas Edison.

Hale supposedly got the idea for Mary’s Lamb from an actual incident during her own days as a schoolteacher. Except, the true authorship remains a bit greyer than the lamb’s fleece.

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Decades after Hale’s book of poems was published, an elderly woman named Mary Tyler came forward saying she was the real Mary. As a girl in Massachusetts around 1815, named Mary Sawyer, she had nursed an abandoned lamb to health and became devoted to her.

One day, encouraged by her brother, she let the lamb follow her to school, where she tried to keep it hidden under her desk. When called to the front of class, however, the lamb followed and the teacher made it leave the room. The sight inspired an older boy, John Roulstone, to pen a few verses that formed the foundation of the rhyme.

A metal historical sign on a grassy field marking the site of the original schoolhouse attended by Mary Sawyer from the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb," with a two-story building blurred in the background.

A sign dedicated to Mary and her lamb, outside the school attended by Mary Sawyer – who claimed to be the original inspiration for the rhyme, despite there being no solid evidence | Credit: Dreamstime

Mary enjoyed the poem so much that she started sharing it with her neighbourhood, and it was soon spreading across the New England area. Hale, who came from Newport, New Hampshire, must have heard it at some point, before adding three verses for her book.

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Despite Mary Tyler’s version of events having no evidence to support it, and there is no surviving copy of Roulstone’s original poem, over the years many started taking up her claim. To this day, her hometown of Sterling, Massachusetts, celebrate her as the true inspiration and a statue of the fabled lamb stands in the town centre.

Perhaps the most surprising of advocates for Tyler, however, had to be the automobile giant Henry Ford. In the 1920s, he bought her old schoolhouse to be part of a heritage museum, and he wrote a short book asserting that Roulstone was the original author of Mary had a little lamb.

Authors

Jonny WilkesFreelance writer

Jonny Wilkes is a former staff writer for BBC History Revealed, and he continues to write for both the magazine and HistoryExtra. He has BA in History from the University of York.