text: The text was translated to Swedish by August Strindberg for Barnen i skogen (1872), a Swedish edition of Babes in the Wood. To this Swedish text a melody was written by Alice Tegnér for publication in the songbook Sjung med oss, Mamma! (1892). Bä, bä, vita lamm, in which the black sheep is replaced with a white lamb, has become one of the most popular Swedish children's songs.
  Origin and meaning
  The rhyme was first printed in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book of about 1744, with words very similar to the modern version:
  In the next surviving printing, in Mother Goose's Melody (c. 1765), the text remained the same, except the last lines, which were given as, "But none for the little boy who cries in the lane".
  As with many nursery rhymes, attempts have been made to find origins and meanings for the rhyme, most of which have no corroborating evidence. Katherine Elwes Thomas in The Real Personages of Mother Goose (1930) suggested the rhyme referred to resentment at the heavy taxation on wool. This has been taken to refer to the medieval English "Great" or "Old Custom" wool tax of 1275, which survived until the fifteenth century. More recently the rhyme has been alleged to have a connection to the slave trade, particularly in the southern United States. 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. Rather than being negative, the wool of black sheep may have been prized as it could be made into dark cloth without dyeing.