Mother Goose
Mother Goose is a well-known figure in the literature of fairy tales and nursery rhymes. Mother Goose is best known in the United States; in the United Kingdom and other English speaking nations the designation "nursery rhymes" is more common.[1]. Most people in the UK now only know Mother Goose as a title for a Christmas pantomime - the tales have formed the basis for many classic British pantomimes, including one called "Mother Goose".
Who was Mother Goose?
Mother Goose is the name given to an archetypical country woman, who is supposedly the originator of the Mother Goose stories and rhymes. Yet no specific writer has ever been identified with such a name, of which the first known mention appears in an aside in a versified chronicle of weekly happenings that appeared regularly for several years, Jean Loret's La Muse Historique (in 1660). His remark, ...comme un conte de la Mere Oye ("...like a Mother Goose story") shows that the term was already familiar.
There are reports, familiar to tourists to Boston, Massachusetts that the original Mother Goose was a Bostonian named Mary Goose who is interred at the Granary Burying Ground. According to Eleanor Early, a Boston travel and history writer of the 1930s and 40s, the original Mother Goose was a real person who lived in Boston in the 1660s. She was reportedly the second wife of Isaac Goose, who brought to the marriage ten children of her own to add to Isaac's ten. After Isaac died, Elizabeth went to live with her eldest daughter, who had married Thomas Fleet, a publisher who lived on Pudding Lane (now Devenshire Street). According to Early, "Mother Goose" used to sing songs and ditties to her grandchildren all day, and other children swarmed to hear them. Finally, her son-in-law gathered her jingles together and printed them.[2]
In The Real Personages of Mother Goose (1930), Katherine Elwes Thomas submits that the image and name "Mother Goose", or "Mere L'Oye", may be based upon ancient legends of the wife of King Robert II of France. "Goose-Footed Bertha" is often referred in French legends as spinning incredible tales that enraptured children. The world authority on the Mother Goose tradition, Iona Opie, does not give any credence to either the Elwes Thomas or the Boston suppositions.
The initiator of the literary fairy tale genre, Charles Perrault, published in 1695 under the name of his son a collection of fairy tales Histoires ou contes du temps passés, avec des moralités, which grew better known under its subtitle, "Contes de ma mère l'Oye" or "Tales of Mother Goose". Perrault's publication marks the first authenticated starting-point for Mother Goose stories.
In 1729 there appeared an English translation of Perrault's collection, Robert Samber's Histories or Tales of Past Times, Told by Mother Goose. John Newbery published a compilation of English rhymes, Mother Goose's Melody, or, Sonnets for the Cradle (London, undated, c.1765), which switched the focus from fairy tales to nursery rhymes, and in English this was the prime connotation for Mother Goose until recently.
The first public appearance of the Mother Goose stories in the New World was in Worcester, Massachusetts, where printer Isaiah Thomas reprinted Samber's volume under the same title, in 1786.[3]
Maurice Ravel wrote Ma Mère l'Oye, a suite for the piano, which he then orchestrated for a ballet.
Other examples
- Books by L. Frank Baum and illustrator W.W. Denslow in the late 1890s featured Mother Goose and Father Goose.
- "Mother Goose" is also the nickname of a character of the movie Mad Max (George Miller, 1979), Jim Goose.
- "Mother Goose" was alo known as The Small White Canary in the late 1800's.
- "Mother Goose" is also the title of a song on the album Aqualung from the progressive rock band Jethro Tull.
- Roberta Williams produced the Mixed-Up Mother Goose series of computer games (now called edutainment) for young children.
- Tales of Brother Goose by Brett Nicholas Moore, a book published in 2006, satirizes Mother Goose stories with modern dialogue and cynical humor.
- eNursery Rhymes by Mother Mouse, a book published in 2006, recasts the traditional Mother Goose rhymes for children of the computer age.
- "Mother Goose" was once told as a moral teaching story to small children in Africa.
See also
- List of children's songs
- List of children's stories
- Mother Goose and Grimm, a comic strip
- Luis van Rooten, Mots d'Heures: Gousses, Rames (1975.
Notes
- ^ Margaret Lima Norgaard, "Mother Goose", Encyclopedia Americana 1987; see, for instance, Peter and Iona Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (1951) 1989.
- ^ Reader's Digest April 1939 Pg 28.
- ^ Charles Francis Potter, "Mother Goose", Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legends II ( 1950) p 751f.
External links
- 19th century illustrated Mother Goose, 6 complete versions from different authors/publishers
- "Who was Mother goose?"
- The Real Mother Goose
- Baby's Mother Goose from Golden Books Publishing
- At Project Gutenberg:
- Mother Goose Clip Art Public domain illustrations of Mother Goose rhymes
- [1] Mother Goose rhymes
- eNursery Rhymes A sample of eNursery Rhymes which recast the traditional Mother Goose rhymes for children of the computer age.