I n t e r p r e t a t i o n1 2 9This, to be sure, is not the most subtle piece of literature ever
penned. There have been more searching investigations of the
human condition. Even so, the verse raises a number of intriguing
questions. To begin with, who speaks the first line? Is it an omnis-
cient narrator, or a character with whom the sheep is in dialogue?
And why does he say ‘Baa baa black sheep, have you any wool?’,
instead of, say, ‘Excuse me, Mr (or Ms) black sheep, have you any
wool?’ Is the speaker’s query a purely academic one? Does he want
to know how much wool the sheep has simply out of idle curiosity,
or is there a less disinterested motive at work here?
It is a fair conjecture that the speaker asks the question because
he wants some of the wool for himself. In that case, however, his
mode of addressing the animal (‘Baa baa black sheep’) seems
distinctly odd. It is possible that Baa baa is the sheep’s name, and
that the speaker of the verse is simply being polite. Perhaps he is
being polite because he wants something from the creature. ‘Baa
baa black sheep’ may be the same kind of construction as ‘Henry
black sheep’, or ‘Emily black sheep’ (the animal’s gender is indeter-
minate). But this is surely implausible. Baa baa is a strange name for
a sheep. It sounds less like the beast’s name than the noise it makes.
(Though there are problems of translation here. Japanese or
Korean sheep almost certainly do not say ‘baa baa’. Perhaps sheep
which belong to the Queen speak with a rather more upper- class
accent and say ‘bahr bahr’.)
Could it be that the speaker is actually imitating the animal to its
face, making a satirical bleating sound in the act of addressing it, as
one might say ‘Moo moo, cow’ or ‘Bow wow, doggie’? If this is the
case, it is surely an astonishingly tactless thing to do. Mocking
someone’s way of speaking is scarcely the most foolproof way of
getting something out of them. This speaker, then, is not only ill