Sleep, baby sleep, 
our cottage vale is deep,
[the]1 little lamb is on the green, 
[with snowy fleece so]2 soft and clean,
Sleep, baby sleep.

Sleep, baby sleep, 
I would not would not weep,
The little lamb he never cries, 
for bright and happy are his eyes,
Sleep, baby sleep,

Sleep, baby sleep, 
near where the woodbines creep,
Be always like the lamb so mild, 
a sweet and kind and gentle child,
Sleep, baby sleep.

Sleep, baby sleep, 
Thy rest shall angels keep. 
While on the grass the lamb shall feed,
and never suffer want or need,
Sleep, baby sleep.

R. Real sets stanza 1

View original text (without footnotes)
¹ Real: "a"
² Real: "his woolly fleece is"

Text Authorship:

• by Anonymous / Unidentified Author [author's text not yet checked against a primary source]

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

• by Nicholas Marshall (b. 1942), "Sleep, baby, sleep" [ voice, sopranino saxophone, descant, treble recorder, and piano ], from Carousel: Seven Children's Songs, no. 6, Forsyth Bros. [sung text checked 1 time]
• by Ramiro Real (b. 1969), "Sleep, baby, sleep", 2002, stanza 1 [ chorus ], from Three Nursery Rhymes, no. 2 [sung text checked 1 time]
• by Bertha Frensel Wegener-Koopman (1874 - 1953), "Sleep, baby, sleep", published 1926, from Nursery Songs, no. 3 [sung text checked 1 time]

Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

• DUT Dutch (Nederlands) (Lidy van Noordenburg) , "Slaap, kindje, slaap", copyright © 2023, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Research team for this page: John Versmoren , Lidy van Noordenburg

This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 20
Word count: 102