Duck, Duck, Witch!

"Old Mother Goose,
      When she wanted to wander.
Would ride through the air
        On a very fine gander."
~J. E. Evans, Old Mother Goose c. 1820

Most of us are familiar with the nursery rhymes of Mother goose.  Thanks the Mother Goose and her rhymes we know that spiders do not make good lunch companions, we know it is possible for a dish to run away with a spoon in total disregard for the social conventions of other cutlery and gravity doesn't stop for babies in tree tops.  But who is this personage with these strange truisms for young children, this old lady in the witch hat that rides on a goose?

France, 1697.  Charles Perrault (remember him?) published his collection of stories Histoires ou Contes du Temps Passé.  The front piece of Perrault's collection of stories (which included "Cinderella", "Puss in Boots", "Sleeping Beauty" and "Little Red Riding Hood") featured an old lady telling stories to children with the engraving "contes de ma mère l'Oye", Tales of my Mother the .  Perrault was not the first to coin this term but when his tales became published in England they were called "Mother Goose's Tales" (Tsurumi).  In the 1760s John Newbery (You may have heard of the Newbery Medal for children's literature) published chap books for children and one of his publications was a collection of stories and rhymes entitled Mother Goose's Melody or Sonnets for the Cradle.

Harlequin and Mother Goose

But how did Mother Goose get the gander and the pointy hat, you may ask?  Let us time travel to the 1800s in Britain where pantomimes, also known as Harlequinades, were very popular.  These pantomimes were improvised stories that featured stock characters such as the mischievous Harlequin, the lovely Columbine, the fool Clown and the miserly old father of Columbine, Pantalone.  In 1806, a very sucessful pantomime called Harlequin and Mother Goose or The Golden Egg, opened up at the Theatre Royal on Drury Lane (You know, where the Muffin Man lives).  In this pantomime Mother Goose is featured as a witchy fairy godmother figure to the two lovers, whom she transforms into Harlequin and Columbine.  In Harlequin and Mother Goose Mother Goose raises a storm and rides on the back of a great gander that lays golden eggs, because she is one bad Mother - shut your mouth!- I was going to say Goose...






Resources:

Adams, Lois. "A Short Bio of Mother Goose".  Under the Green Willow. 30 March 2010 Web. 12 Nov. 2013. http://greenwillowblog.com/?p=994.

Delamar, Gloria T., "Just Who Was Mother Goose?". Mother Goose Society.  Web. 7 Nov. 2013. http://www.librarysupport.net/mothergoosesociety/who.html.

Tsurumi, Ryoji. "The Developement of Mother goose in Britain in the Nineteenth Century". Folklore, Vol. 101, No. 1 (1990). pp. 28 - 35. Web. 7 Nov. 2013. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1259881.

Zipes, Jack. When Dreams Came True: Classical Fairy Tales and Their Tradition. New York: Routledge, 1999. Print.