Little Boy Blue

Little boy blue, 

Come blow your horn, 

The sheep's in the meadow, 

The cow's in the corn. 

But where is the boy 

Who looks after the sheep? 

He's under a haystack, 

Fast asleep.

On the eve of the winter solstice, there was tension within the little farming town. Every year since the elders could remember, a haunting melody could be heard coming from the nearby mountains. Those who stayed outside past dark on this night were not heard from again as they were drawn to the haunting music. Every villager of Blue had heard the music in their lifetime, but if they followed the laws drawn out by the music maker in the years before, they would not be harmed. 

The little children were warned as soon as they could walk if they did not follow the laws, they would become like the child that was lost before their grandparents were born for being foolhardy. The little boy who failed to adhere to the simple guidelines that were lain before him, and for that he was forever lost. 

He was burdened with the simple task of guarding the town's sheep and cows from straying into the meadow and fields of the unknown owner of the neighboring town. The task was simple: blow the fallen horn of the sheep to bring the animals back to the once cheerful town. One day, when the sun was high above the little boy's post near the haystacks, the cool wind brushed his curls from his face, and the hay stalks rustled a soft lullaby, the little boy succumbed to the gentle push towards an afternoon nap. During his mistake, the sheep, un-mastered, scrambled and kicked their way into the forbidden meadow to chew upon the greener pasture. The cows mooed and rocked their bells, knocking over the tempting yellow morsels that were now theirs. The little boy slept, never waking to call the wayward sheep or the mischievous cows back to their own fields. Lost in a dream of playing in the sands at the beach that he had only read about in books, he never woke to the shadow that fell across his small frame, blocking the warm sun that he would never again feel on the curls that his mother loved so much. The owner of the now destroyed fields of corn and trampled meadow took his wrath out on the innocence of a child, burying him beneath the suffocating hay, damning him to forever walk the earth in search of others who failed to fulfill their duties. 

If one was to visit the little farming town of Blue near the winter solstice, and it was a particularly warm day, and you feel as if you would want to lay beside the haystacks and take a well deserved nap, I would not recommend that you listen to nature's lullaby. If you do, you may wake up to an endless eternal walk with the damned boy, and listen to his horn for as long as there are sheep to be brought back from the meadow and the cows from the corn.