Mother_goose

For other uses, see Mother Goose (disambiguation).

A page from a late 17th century handwritten and illustrated version of Charles Perrault\'s Contes de ma mère l\'Oye, depicting Puss in Boots

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. She is often prominent in Mother Goose stories, also more commonly known as "nursery rhymes" .Margaret Lima Norgaard, "Mother Goose", Encyclopedia Americana 1987; see, for instance, Peter and Iona Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (1951) 1989. Most people in the UK now only know Mother Goose as a title for a Christmas pantomime; besides the pantomime called "Mother Goose", the rhymes have formed the basis for many classic British pantomimes.

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, collected in 1650.Collected editions were published in 1650, 1660 and 1665; the 1650 reference to "ma mère l"Oye" was noted by William Bracy in Encyclopedia Americana, s.v. "Mother Goose" 1965:512), according to Mohammed Sahed, "a Common nomenclature for traditional rhymes", Asian Folklore Studies, 54 (1995:307-14). His remark, ...comme un conte de la Mere Oye ("...like a Mother Goose story") shows that the term was already familiar.

In spite of repeated facts,"Mother Goose; Longevity of the Boston Myth— The Facts of History in this Matter, The New York Times, 4 February 1899 (on-line text). there are reports, familiar to tourists to Boston, Massachusetts that the original Mother Goose was a Bostonian wife of an Isaac Goose, either named Elizabeth Foster Goose (1635-1693) or Mary Goose (1665-1758) who is interred at the Granary Burying Ground on Tremont Street.Listed as "Elizabeth" but the grave marker is distinctly inscribed "Mary Goose" 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.Eleanor Early\'s material was drawn from The New York Times "Mother Goose", 20 October 1886 (on-line): compare gravestone date. 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 Devonshire 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.Reader\'s Digest April 1939:28.

In The Real Personages of Mother Goose (1930), Katherine Elwes Thomas submits that the image and name "Mother Goose", or "Mère l\'Oye", may be based upon ancient legends of the wife of King Robert II of France, Berthe la fileuse ("Bertha the Spinner") or Berthe pied d\'oie ("Goose-Foot Bertha" ), called in the Midi the reine Pedauque who, according to Thomas, is often referred in French legends as spinning incredible tales that enraptured children. The 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 my 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)A.H. Bullen\'s 1904 facsimile of Newbery\'s 1791 edition of Mother Goose\'s Melody(on-line), 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.Charles Francis Potter, "Mother Goose", Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legends II ( 1950) p 751f.

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.

• The Mother Goose Award is and annual award presented to "the most exciting newcomer to British children\'s book illustration."Mother Goose Award winners 1979-1996. Accessed February 7, 2008

• "Mother Goose" is also the nickname of a character of the movie Mad Max (George Miller, 1979), Jim Goose.

• "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.

• "Mother Goose" was once told as a moral teaching story to small children in Africa.

American advertisement; premium was Baum\'s book, 1900

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

External links

• 1904 Facsimile of earliest American compilation, John Newberry\'s Mother Goose\'s Melody, 1791 edition
• "Who was Mother goose?"
• The Real Mother Goose
• Baby\'s Mother Goose from Golden Books Publishing
• At Project Gutenberg:
  • The Tales of Mother Goose by Charles Perrault translated by Charles Welsh
  • The Real Mother Goose illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright
  • The Only True Mother Goose Melodies (Anonymous)
  • Mother Goose in Prose by L. Frank Baum
• Mother Goose Clip Art Public domain illustrations of Mother Goose rhymes

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