"A Wise Old Owl" is an

English language English is a West Germanic language that developed in early medieval England and has since become a English as a lingua franca, global lingua franca. The namesake of the language is the Angles (tribe), Angles, one of the Germanic peoples th ...

nursery rhyme A nursery rhyme is a traditional poem or song for children in Britain and other European countries, but usage of the term dates only from the late 18th/early 19th century. The term Mother Goose rhymes is interchangeable with nursery rhymes. Fr ...

. It has a

Roud Folk Song Index The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of around 250,000 references to nearly 25,000 songs collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world. It is compiled by Steve Roud. Roud's Index is a combination of the Broadsid ...

number of 7734 and in ''The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes'', 2nd Ed. of 1997, as number 394. The rhyme is an improvement of a traditional nursery rhyme "There was an owl lived in an oak, wisky, wasky, weedle."

Lyrics

This version was first published in '' Punch'', April 10, 1875, and ran as follows.

There was an owl liv'd in an oak The more he heard, the less he spoke The less he spoke, the more he heard. O, if men were all like that wise bird.I. Opie and P. Opie, ''The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), p. 403.

One version was published upon bookmarks during the mid-1930s, and goes as follows:

A wise old owl lived in an oak, The more he saw, the less he spoke The less he spoke, the more he heard, Now, wasn't he a wise old bird?

The 1875 version is ungrammatical from the standpoint of modern English, relying on an apo koinou construction for meter; this is also used in a children's song called ''Bingo''.

History

The rhyme refers to the traditional image of

owl Owls are birds from the order Strigiformes (), which includes over 200 species of mostly solitary and nocturnal birds of prey typified by an upright stance, a large, broad head, binocular vision, binaural hearing, sharp talons, and feathers a ...

s as the symbol of wisdom. It was recorded as early as 1875 and is apparently older than that. It was quoted by

John D. Rockefeller John Davison Rockefeller Sr. (July 8, 1839 – May 23, 1937) was an American businessman and philanthropist. He was one of the List of richest Americans in history, wealthiest Americans of all time and one of the richest people in modern hist ...

in 1909 and is frequently misattributed to Edward Hersey Richards and William R. Cubbage. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the primary Land warfare, land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of th ...

used the rhyme on a poster with the tweaked ending, "Soldier.... be like that old bird!" with the caption "Silence means security."

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wise Old Owl, A American nursery rhymes English children's songs Traditional children's songs Fictional owls Songs about birds Songs with unknown songwriters 1870s songs Year of song unknown