Dear Sensibility, O La! Lyrics
A walker stops to comfort a lost lamb in very fancy words, and the lamb repays the kindness by landing on the walker's toe.
Dear Sensibility, O La!
Dear Sensibility, O la!
I heard a little lamb cry, baa!
Says I, "So you have lost mamma?"
"Ah!"
The little lamb, as I said so,
Frisking about the fields did go,
And, frisking, trod upon my toe.
"Oh!"
Printed from https://nurseryrhymes.co/dear-sensibility-o-la/
- Type
- Animal Rhymes, Mother Goose
- Tune
- Spoken, with sound effects
- Best for ages
- 3 to 8 years
Hand Motions and Actions
| When you sing | Do this |
|---|---|
| I heard a little lamb cry, baa! | Cup a hand behind your ear, then bleat. |
| Frisking about the fields did go | Skip on the spot. |
| And, frisking, trod upon my toe | Hop on one foot, holding the other. |
What Does Dear Sensibility, O La! Mean?
The opening line pokes fun at gushing, sentimental speech. In the 1700s, sensibility meant a tender heart that is easily moved, and poets of the day wrote at length about it. O la is an old-fashioned exclamation, a bit like "oh my". The speaker starts in that grand voice, but the lamb only frisks about and lands on a toe, so the poem ends in a yelp instead of a sigh. The "Ah!" is probably the lamb's sad answer, and the "Oh!" is the speaker's.
History and Origin
The rhyme is printed in The Only True Mother Goose Melodies (1833), an early American Mother Goose book. Its mock-sentimental tone is probably the point: it reads like a light joke at the expense of the gushing verse that was popular a few decades earlier.
Learning Activities
- Two voices: one person reads the speaker, the other bleats the lamb, and both groan for the Ah! and the Oh!
- Fancy words: take a plain event like dropping a spoon and describe it in the grandest words you can, then say what really happened.
- Lamb watch: visit a farm in spring, or look at pictures, and see how lambs spring along on all four feet.