"Mary Had a Little Lamb" is an English language nursery rhyme of nineteenth-century American origin, first published by American writer Sarah Josepha Hale in 1830. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 7622.
Illustration by William Wallace Denslow (1902)
The Redstone School (1798), now in Sudbury, Massachusetts, is the schoolhouse Mary Tyler attended.
A nursery rhyme is a traditional poem or song for children in Britain and many other countries, but usage of the term dates only from the late 18th/early 19th century. The term Mother Goose rhymes is interchangeable with nursery rhymes.
Illustration of "Hey Diddle Diddle", a well-known nursery rhyme
Popular Nursery Tales and Rhymes, Warner & Routledge, London, c. 1859
"Baa, Baa, Black Sheep", from a 1901 illustration by William Wallace Denslow