[2] The following additional verses are often added to the rhyme: This is an allusion of the common practice of "docking" or cutting off lambs' tails.

The earliest record of this rhyme is in a manuscript of around 1805, which contains only the first verse which references the adult Bo Peep , called 'Little' because she was short and not because she was young.

For example, in 1364, an ale-wife, Alice Causton, was convicted of giving short measure, for which crime she had to "play bo peep thorowe a pillery".

[5] Andrew Boorde uses the same phrase in 1542, "And evyll bakers, the which doth nat make good breade of whete, but wyl myngle other corne with whete, or do nat order and season hit, gyving good wegght, I would they myghte play bo peep throwe a pyllery".

[6] Nevertheless, connections with sheep are early; a fifteenth-century ballad includes the lines: "Halfe England ys nowght now but shepe // In every corner they play boe-peep".