One freezing cold morning in March of 1816, a little girl from Massachusetts named Mary Sawyer headed out to tend the family farm with her father.

 One freezing cold morning in March of 1816, a little girl from Massachusetts named Mary Sawyer headed out to tend the family farm with her father. 

On her way, she found a lamb that had been abandoned by its mother and was near death. Her father grudgingly allowed her to take it in out of the cold and do her best to nurse it back to health.

 Miraculously, the lamb began to recover after just one night of Mary swaddling it in old clothes and nursing it from a bottle. Once the lamb regained enough strength to walk, it started following Mary everywhere, even to school.

One morning, Mary reported to class and tucked her new friend under her desk, covered with a blanket. But, while she was reciting at the front of the class, the lamb started making noise with its hooves, then revealed itself — to the delight of all the kids. One visiting boy named John Roulstone was so taken by the incident that the very next day, he rode to the schoolhouse on horseback and handed Mary a slip of paper containing a three-stanza poem called “Mary Had A Little Lamb.”

However, when Mary Sawyer revealed this story years after the poem had already been published under a different author’s name, it sparked a controversy over who the real Mary actually was or if she even existed at all. Go inside the surprisingly controversial story behind this iconic nursery rhyme: 

Read the rhyme.

Mary had a little lamb, whose fleece was white as snow,

And everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go.

It followed her to school one day, which was against the rules.

It made the children laugh and play to see a lamb at school.

And so the teacher turned it out, but still it lingered near,

And waited patiently about, till Mary did appear.

“Why does the lamb love Mary so?” the eager children cry.

“Why, Mary loves the lamb, you know,” the teacher did reply.

This nursery rhyme is based on a true story that happened about 200 years ago. It’s telling about something that happened in the past.