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Who, or What, Was Mother Goose?
Mother Goose sounds old fashioned, so let’s bring her story up to date.
© McGill Univ., Canada, chapbooks collection
Mother Goose was sometimes illustrated as an old country woman wearing a tall hat and riding on the back of a goose. Or sometimes as just a big, motherly goose wearing reading glasses and a bonnet, a friendly figure children could trust.
Support comes from Wild Delight Bird Food, offering a variety of blends designed to mimic the natural resources wild birds crave, available at Chewy.com.
BirdNote®
Who, or What, Was Mother Goose?
Written by Bob Sundstrom
This is BirdNote.
Mother Goose sounds old fashioned, so let’s bring her story up to date. Everyone knows Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. They’re Disney stories, right? Not exactly: three centuries before they helped make Disney famous, they were among the original Mother Goose tales. And hundreds of classic nursery rhymes, like Three Blind Mice and Humpty Dumpty, were also first gathered under Mother Goose’s wing.
Such stories and rhymes were long part of Europe’s oral folklore. The stories were first published in France, in 1697, as Tales of My Mother Goose. The book appeared in English soon after.
Just who, or what, was Mother Goose? The name originates in an old French euphemism: stories told by elder women were called “tales told by Mother Goose.”
Mother Goose was sometimes illustrated as an old country woman wearing a tall hat and riding on the back of a goose. Or sometimes as just a big, motherly goose wearing reading glasses and a bonnet, a friendly figure children could trust.
There’s something timeless about big feathery friends for children, even today.
For BirdNote, I’m Michael Stein.
This episode is brought to you by Wild Delight Bird Food, which aims to support wild bird populations with clean, nutritious ingredients in every blend. Available at Chewy.com.
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Senior Producer: Mark Bramhill
Producer: Sam Johnson
Managing Producer: Jazzi Johnson
Managing Producer: Ariana Remmel
Content Director: Jonese Franklin
Music: "The English Dancing Master: Bouree"; Artist: Broadside Band and Jeremy Barlow; Album: Popular tunes in 17th Century England; Publishing: 1980 Harmonia Mundi
BirdNote’s theme composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2019 BirdNote February 2019/2020 & April 2026
Narrator: Michael Stein
ID# mothergoose-01-2019-02-04 mothergoose-01
References:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/mother-goose
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2013/04/who-was-the-real-mother-goose/
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mother-Goose-fictional-character
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2013/04/who-was-the-real-mother-goose/
http://m.rhymes.org.uk/mother-goose-origins.htm
Bob Sundstrom
Writer