There Was a Little Girl

The little girl with a curl is "very, very good" or else "horrid," with nothing in between, the perfect line for a parent describing a toddler's moods. It is usually filed with the old Mother Goose verses, but it was written around 1850 by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who sang it to his fussing baby daughter.

Origins

The rhyme was composed around 1850 by the celebrated American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. According to family accounts, including memoirs written by his son Ernest, Longfellow improvised and sang the verse to his second daughter, Alice Mary, when she was a baby to tease her when she was fussy. Because it was an informal family ditty, Longfellow did not include it in his published poetry collections. However, the rhyme spread through word of mouth and was eventually published in children's anthologies such as The Little Mother Goose in 1912.

Meaning & Interpretation

The verse describes a little girl with a single curl in the middle of her forehead. The primary theme is the rapid change in a child's temperament. When she is well-behaved, she is described as very good, but when she is in a bad mood, she is called horrid. This captures the daily realities of parenting in a lighthearted, humorous manner. While the rhyme is often associated with traditional Mother Goose nursery tales, it is a 19th-century American literary creation.

Who wrote the nursery rhyme There Was a Little Girl?

The rhyme was written by the famous American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He composed it as an informal, humorous poem to sing to his daughter Alice Mary during her infancy.