Four lines about a sleepy shepherd boy who has let the sheep and cow wander off. Short enough for the youngest listeners, with a question and answer shape that invites a reply.
From Mother Goose / Nursery Rhymes (traditional). See the whole collection.
Little Boy Blue, come, blow your horn!
The sheep's in the meadow, the cow's in the corn.
Where's the little boy that looks after the sheep?
Under the haystack, fast asleep!
About this rhyme
Roud 11318 · First printed c. 1744
This one first appears in Tommy Thumb's Little Song Book around 1744, though it is probably older than that. Shakespeare seems to nod at it in King Lear, where Edgar, playing mad, sings to a shepherd whose sheep are in the corn. You may read that the rhyme is really about Cardinal Wolsey. The folklorists Iona and Peter Opie throw that out, and there is nothing to support it.
The fun is that the boy has one job and is asleep on it, under the haystack, while the animals wander into the crops. Cup your hands and blow the horn loud. Then drop to a whisper for 'fast asleep'. A soft one for winding down.
Public domain. Text from The Real Mother Goose (Blanche Fisher Wright, 1916), via Project Gutenberg. View the source edition