Do you remember this nursery rhyme from your childhood? "May had a
little lamb/its fleece was white as snow/and everywhere that Mary
went/the lamb was sure to go."
There really was a Mary and a little lamb. Mary was Mary Sawyer of
Sterling, Mass. According to Ruth Hopfmann of the Sterling Historical
Society, the story of Mary and her lamb dates back to 1816 when Mary's
lamb followed her to school one day.
Mary hid the lamb under her desk. All went well until Mary was called
to the front of the class for a recitation. The lamb again followed and
was banished to a nearby shed until dismissal.
Visiting the school that day was young John Roulstone, who
commemorated Mary's adventure in three verses. Fourteen years later,
Sara Josepha Hale, a magazine editor, included Roulstone's poem in a
booklet of poetry and added several verses of her own.
Fleece from the lamb, it is said, was used to knit two pairs of
stockings. Those stockings were unraveled by Mary Sawyer herself in
1883 when, in a fund-raising project aimed at saving Boston's Old South Church, she sold cards wrapped with the yarn and telling the story of the verse.
Today Mary and her lamb live on, not only in the verse but in a statue
of the two that stands in the town common.
