Grandma Henke

Mother Goose songs and stories have entertained children for hundreds of years.     When my first son was born my first book purchase was this one and when he was just tiny I read the nursery rhymes and fantasies from its pages … singing those from the Record Album I owned as a child.   I read it to my babies and children for many years.

No one can positively claim to know where Mother Goose originated, although many historians have tried.    She probably began back when stories were told and retold and not written down.   Several Queens are linked to her name, a French Queen Bertha, who was known as “Queen Goose foot” or “Goose footed Bertha” because of one of her feet which was extra large and webbed.   A different Queen Bertha, was said to have given birth to a child with the head of a goose … (that is a legend I don’t believe at all). 

I prefer the story from Boston, Massachusetts, that Mother Goose was actually the wife of Isaac Goose in the 1660′s.   She was actually Isaac’s second wife and each of them had ten children when they were married, which is a walloping total of twenty children.   Now if that wouldn’t inspire “The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe” nothing would!   After her husband passed away she went to live with her oldest daughter whose husband was a publisher.    Over the years she had sung so many little songs and rhymes to her grandchildren and their friends that he decided to print them.      Unfortunately, this is one of the least believed by the Mother Goose historians.    What is for sure, however, is that over the years there were many different writers in different times (both men and women) who added to her repertoire in folklore fashion.

The first nursery rhymes (which are attributed to Mother Goose) that I remember were “Jack and Jill” and “Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater”.     I can remember my Grandma Matheson telling them to me as I sat on her lap.      When I got my own record player for Christmas the year I was probably 10 years old the album that came with it was my favorite.   The picture on this album doesn’t look familiar but these are the songs I learned every one of these songs and later sang them all to my children.

One of my favorite Mother Goose memories was when we lived in Blanding,      My friend, Claudia Black and I created a “Mother Goose/Mother Nature” act that kept us busy doing our little skits around town at different parties.    If I do say so myself, we were hilarious.     Mother Goose spouted off a few ditties that hadn’t made her book … that included people who lived in the town … and Mother Nature, well, you KNOW it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.   I bet you didn’t know they could sing and dance either!  As you can see we made the local newspaper but I wish I had a better picture of us.

The only thing I really know about Mother Nature is that in prehistoric times people worshipped goddesses to do with fertility and crops.   Algonquin legend says that “beneath the clouds live the Earth-Mother from whom is derived the Water of Life, who at her bosom feeds plants, animals and men.”     I’ll have to tell that to Claudia.   She was particular about her bosom … and didn’t even nurse her own children, let alone plans, animals, and men.     I would say that her six, and my five children qualified us under “fertility”, however.