INN ASSISTANT (looking through Christmas ornaments): So this isn’t a fairy?
MICHEL: That is Little Bo Peep.
Little Bo Peep is a well known nursery rhyme, in which the character of Little Bo Peep is a shepherdess – hence the staff that the ornament carries, which the assistant thinks is a fairy wand. The song dates to the 19th century, but bo peep was known in the Middle Ages to mean that someone was being punished in the pillory, and the link with sheep is also very old.