where did the song baa baa black sheep come from
Baa, Baa, Black Sheep As with many nursery rhymes, attempts have been made to find origins and meanings for the rhyme, most which have no corroborating evidence.[1] Katherine Elwes Thomas in The Real Personages of Mother Goose (1930) suggested that the rhyme referred to resentment at the heavy taxation on wool.[5] This has particularly been taken to refer to the medieval English "Great" or "Old Custom" wool tax of 1275, which survived until the fifteenth century.[1] More recently the rhyme has been connected to the slave trade, particularly in the southern United States.[6] This explanation was advanced during debates over political correctness and the use and reform of nursery rhymes in the 1980s, but has no supporting historical evidence.[7] Rather than being negative, the wool of black sheep may have been prized as it could be made into dark cloth without dyeing.[6]
The Black Velvet Band "The Black Velvet Band" (Roud number 2146) is a traditional folk song collected from singers in Australia, England, Canada, Ireland and the United States describing how a young man is tricked and then sentenced to transportation to Australia, a common punishment in the United Kingdom during the 19th century. Versions were also published on broadsides.