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Mother Goose

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This article is about the fairy tale character. 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 which are often published as Mother Goose Rhymes as if Mother Goose herself were the author or collector. As a character, she appears in one "nursery rhyme" .[1] A Christmas pantomime called "Mother Goose" is often performed in the United Kingdom. The so-called "Mother Goose" rhymes and stories have formed the basis for many classic British pantomimes. Mother Goose is generally depicted in literature and book illustration as an elderly country woman in a tall hat and shawl, but is sometimes depicted as a goose.


"Old Mother Goose"

In addition to being the purported authoress of nursery rhymes, Mother Goose is herself the title character of one such rhyme:

Old Mother Goose,
When she wanted to wander,
Would ride through the air
On a very fine gander.
Jack's mother came in,
And caught the goose soon,
And mounting its back,
Flew up to the moon.[2]

The transition from a shadowy generic figure to one with such concrete actions was effected at a pantomime Harlequin and Mother Goose: or, The Golden Egg in 1806-07, Ryoji Tsurumi has shown;[3] The pantomime was first performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, 29 December, and many times repeated in the new year. Harlequin and Mother Goose: or, The Golden Egg, starring the famous clown Joseph Grimaldi, was written by Thomas Dibdin, who invented the actions suitable for a Mother Goose brought to the stage, and recreated her as a witch-figure, Tsurumi notes: in the first scene the stage directions show her raising a storm and, for the very first time, flying a gander. The magical Mother Goose transformed the old miser into Pantaloon of the commedia dell'arte and the British pantomime tradition, and the young lovers Colin and Colinette, into Columbine and "Clown". Played en travesti by Samuel Simmons[4]— a pantomime tradition that survives today— she also raises a ghost in a macabre churchyard scene.

Other examples

man wearing crown has stick in one hand and nervous lad in the other
The King of Hearts, from "The Queen of Hearts" poem for an edition of Mother Goose published 1901. Illustration by William Wallace Denslow.
  • Tales of Brother Goose by Brett Nicholas Moore, a book of short stories published in 2006, satirizes Mother Goose stories with modern dialogue and cynical humor.

List of Adaptations of Mother Goose

The classic Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes revamped with a distinct motif by modern authors.

  • "Mother Goose and her Fabulous Puppet Friends" by Diane Ligon
  • The Space Child's Mother Goose by Frederick Winsor: Mother Goose for scientific children.
  • eNursery Rhymes by Mother Mouse: Mother Goose in the computer nursery.
  • Nursery Rhymes Old and New: Mother Goose meets Mother Mouse face to face.
  • Mother Goose Tells the Truth About Middle Age by Sydney Altman: Mother Goose for baby boomers.
  • New Adventures Of Mother Goose by Bruce Lansky: Mother Goose with the violence abridged.
  • Christian Mother Goose by Marjorie Ainsborough Decker: Mother Goose gets religion.
  • The Inner City Mother Goose by Eve Merriam: Urban Mother Goose.
  • Black Mother Goose Book by Elizabeth Murphy Oliver: Ethnic Mother Goose.

Regionally flavored Mother Geese.

  • The Alaska Mother Goose: North Country Nursery Rhymes by Shelley Gill
  • An Appalachian Mother Goose by James Still
  • Tutu Nene: The Hawaiian Mother Goose Rhymes by Debra Ryll
  • Texas Mother Goose by David Davis
  • Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes Texas Style by Vicki Nichols

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Margaret Lima Norgaard, "Mother Goose", Encyclopedia Americana 1987; see, for instance, Peter and Iona Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (1951) 1989.
  2. ^ I. Opie and P. Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), pp. 88-90.
  3. ^ Tsurumi 1990:28-35.
  4. ^ Tsurumi (1990:30) notes that Simmon's "Mother Goose" was memorialised at the time in a popular engraving.
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