Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Mary Had A Little Lamb

Episode Date: May 20, 2020

Did you know the little nursery rhyme is controversial? It’s true: Two towns in New England can barely stand to see one another on the map (kind of). Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, and welcome to Short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck, and this is Short Stuff. We are talking about a little nursery rhyme,

pretty adorable in its nature, that you may have heard of before. It's called Mary Had a Little Lamb. Oh, wait a minute, was this lamb's fleece as white as snow? It was, and there was something remarkable about it, in that wherever Mary went, the lamb went as well. It sounds like a stalker to me. A little bit.

So this is pretty interesting in that this is controversial. I mean, this cute little nursery rhyme that every English speaking kid on the planet has heard at one time or another, especially if you're raised in America, may have had, number one, a real life origin. And number two, there are two towns in Massachusetts and New Hampshire,

where the local historical societies will fight each other with bike chains and brass knuckles if they run into one another in public. Yeah, this is really interesting. In Sterling, Massachusetts, if you go, you're gonna see a little copper statue of a little lamb, and it's Mary Sawyer's Little Lamb specifically, which she brought to school in 1815.

She was a little girl who, and this, I guess we should say allegedly for all this stuff, because everyone's saying that each other is wrong. So allegedly, Mary saved this little lamb, nursed it back to health overnight, and over a few days, the lamb got much better, and then she was gonna go to school one day, and her brother, Nat, said,

hey, why don't you bring that lamb to school, since you love it so much? Why don't you marry it? And she did bring the lamb to school, hiding it in a basket under her chair, and at one point she stands up to take part in a recitation lesson, and the lamb bleeds, the teacher laughs,

she takes the lamb outside and kills it. No. She takes the lamb outside and stores it in the shed, but this caught the idea of a guy named, or the eye of a guy named John Rolestone. Yeah, he was an older boy who I guess was visiting the schoolhouse where all this took place that day. He was on his way off to Harvard,

and he died shortly after of tuberculosis, but before that, he wrote a poem through several lines, just basically what everybody knows from Mary Had a Little Lamb, supposedly that night. He was so taken by this thing, by this event. Came back the next day on horseback and handed Mary the little poem he wrote for her, and Mary Sawyer went on for the rest of her life

as Mary, the girl with the little lamb that she'd nursed back to health, and the source of the famous nursery rhyme, Mary Had a Little Lamb. Yeah, and it's important to note that he wrote but three stanzas of that poem, and I think he was just thought it was cute. I think it's an adorable story that not only did she

nurse this little lamb and take it to school, but this rising freshman at Harvard was so smitten with this whole thing on his little visit to the school that he wrote a poem about it. That's right. It's adorable. Then he died of tuberculosis later that year. Yeah, point that out again.

So John Rawlstone and Mary Sawyer are the source of the inspiration and the basis of that nursery rhyme, Mary Had a Little Lamb, as far as Sterling, Massachusetts is concerned. But if you drive a little further north, about 90 miles north into New Hampshire, Southwest New Hampshire, you come across the town of Newport,

you will get a totally different story that their position is basically that Mary Sawyer was a lying old lady who lied her whole life and made up this fantastic tale, and that it was really Sarah Joseph Hayle, who was a native of Newport, New Hampshire, who was very famous for setting up the first Thanksgiving in the United States.

Like as a national holiday, she's the one that made that happen, that she's the one who wrote Mary Had a Little Lamb. Right, and I think we should take a break. Okay. And before we do that, I want to point out that Josh did not misspeak. Her middle name was Josepha and not Joseph.

Or Josephine. Yeah, it just sounded a little funny and people might think, why did Josh spice that one up? Put a little mustard on it. So we'll come back and explain more about her story and where Henry Ford figures in right after this. And with that, we'll be back.

See you next time. Bye. On the podcast, hey dude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, hey dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use hey dude as our jumping off point,

but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64?

Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing.

Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to, Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast,

Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help, this I promise you. Oh God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael.

Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now.

If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right. So Sarah, Josepha, Josepha Hale.

I like Josepha, but I hadn't considered Josepha. That's a good one too. That sounds really biblical. Like she suddenly just grew a beard without a mustache. Right. You know what I mean? Yes, like come to me, Josepha, and let me put oils on your feet.

Right. That's exactly what I was thinking. Remember, but what congressman was it that literally anointed someone's feet with oil? It was Ashcroft, I think, wasn't it? Was it? Yeah, what a bizarre time. It was, I think it was-

It was Ashcroft. You're totally right, I think. He also sang some weird patriotic song about the eagle flying high around the same time. He got some bad press. Everybody was like, wow, you're bonkers, buddy. Oh man, I missed that guy. He was fun for the news cycle.

He really was. All right, so Sarah, Josepha Hale moved to Boston in 1828. She was a poet and a writer. And she was actually the editor of the very first women's magazine in the US called Goddy's Ladies Book. And it was here in Boston that she met a man named Lowell Mason who was a musician and composer who said,

you know what, if we get some of these poems and set them to music, they would be called songs. And we can use these in schools to make little kids good moral kids. When I think of Lowell, this kind of folk musician, children's music study proponent guy, have you ever seen that Mr. Show where David Cross is like the guy who sculpted the little body

that he moves from like Appalachian folk art? That guy, that's who I think of when I think of this guy. You know, just kind of weird and hapless and like out of it and like his whole focus is learning to get music into schools for children. And just, I don't know why, but it's really stuck in there. You know, our buddy Scott Aukerman wrote for Mr. Show and it was kind of his entree into the entertainment industry.

Is that right? Yeah, he does a spot on impression of Bob Odenkirk. Oh yeah? Oh, it's great. I gotta see that. It's very funny. Nice. All right, so Mason and Hale are writing songs together.

They put 15 poems to music called Poems for Our Children. And we should point out that the original tune that they wrote for her version of Mary Had a Little Lamb was not the familiar melody that we know. That came on later, I think. Yeah, apparently that comes from a British song that goes merrily, we roll along, roll along, roll along merrily, we roll along over the dark blue sea.

Hey, nice. Oh, thank you. Thank you, I practiced pretty extensively for it. It was on key. I'm a little tone deaf. It was a little pitchy, but it was fine. Okay, thanks. I'll go with it, it was fine.

No, it was good, but yeah, that came on later. The original melody, I don't even think we know that, do we? No, but if you can get your hands on juvenile liar, Lear, L-Y-R-E, that book that it was originally in, I think the notes are in there. Okay. It sounds like Inagata De Vita.

That's your go-to. So Mary Sawyer, going back to her, the little girl who allegedly actually nursed this little lamb who followed her around and stalked her, she said, you know what, those first three verses of your poem, Ms. Hale, is exactly like the ones that John Rolstone wrote about my true story. What is up with that?

Yeah, I guess she just thought that somehow Sarah Joseph Hale had gotten her hands somehow on this poem that John Rolstone had written for and just expanded on that. And Sarah Joseph Hale was like, no, that's not it at all. I made this whole thing up from scratch using strictly my imagination. I've never heard of you or your delightful little story

from your childhood about the lamb. Which sounds totally made up, by the way. Right, and so this was like, so now you had two upstanding women, Sarah Joseph Hale, the founder of the American Holiday Thanksgiving. And Mary Sawyer, who went on to become the matron of her local hospital, were basically saying

that one another was lying without saying that one another was lying. And two towns like reputations were on the line. Yeah, and they actually, as older ladies signed sworn statements saying that what they were saying was true and correct. And it kind of went on like this for a little while. And I promised Henry Ford, and here we're gonna deliver

because in 1927, automobile magnate Henry Ford got involved and was firmly in the Mary Sawyer camp. Firmly. He was just a fan of hers, I guess, because he bought the original frame from that red schoolhouse and moved it to Sudbury where he owned an inn. And he wrote a book about this called

The Story of Mary and Her Little Lamb. I find that him moving the inn to Sudbury confuses the story tremendously because it just takes two small towns and adds a third one unnecessarily if you ask me. Sure. But yeah, Henry Ford wrote a 60-page book just basically touting Mary Sawyer's story,

much of the chagrin of the town of Newport, New Hampshire and its historical society. And to this day, they will say like, Henry Ford made a great car. I don't know how he would be really as an historian. So, his opinion doesn't count for much. What I wanna know is what was on the other 56 pages? Right.

You know? Yeah. Couldn't it have taken more than four to tell this little story? No, I know. I don't know what he talked about. And I think my joke bone is broken because I can't come up with anything stupid to add.

Well, it depends on, there are very much two camps here. And to this day, people that defend Hale, I mean, people that defend Sawyer are like, this is a sweet girl who had this sweet story. Why would she make this up and tell it her whole life? Right. And Hale defenders were like, well, why would she just conjure up this poem

out of thin air? Or I mean, why would she copy it and claim she conjured it from thin air? Cause like she wouldn't have even known about this poem. Yeah, she just, from what I can tell, she doesn't seem like the type who would have committed plagiarism and then stuck to the lie her entire life. Yeah.

It's a mystery. It's a mystery. And even Henry Ford couldn't solve it. But to end this one, cause we don't really have a resolution to it, there is like the full poem by Sarah Joseph Hale. It ends pretty cutely because she's talking about how everyone wanted to know

why the lamb loved Mary so much. And in the poem, it says, well, it's because Mary loves the lamb back. And then it ends with, and you each gentle animal in confidence may bind and make them follow at your will. If only you are kind. Isn't that a sweet thing to teach little kids?

Be kind to animals. And you can basically be the boss of them. Yes. And you will never be a serial killer. That's right. Because you're kind to them rather than torture something. That's right. Well, that's it for short stuff, everybody. We're out.

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