The Liverpool Philharmonic are having a lot of fun participating in the Surestart programme, teaching nursery rhymes to children and their parents. But in an interview on Radio 4, it was explained that they were not doing Baa Baa Black Sheep is it was about the slave trade, and cotton-picking in Virginia. And that people were offended by it.
Now, I can well believe that people can claim to be offended by it: we have seen in recent months people having a go at Leadbelly's Pick a Bale of cotton and Black Betty. But how about this slave/cotton supposed "origin" of the rhyme? When and where was this bit of fakelore invented? Anybody spotted it before?