Who Was the Real Mother Goose?
Jul 28th, 2007 by lisa
If you visit Boston, Massachusetts and take a tour of the Granary Burying Ground, you will likely be told that the original Mother Goose was named Mary Goose. You will be shown this marker, where Mary Goose sleeps in eternal rest.
The inscription reads:
Here lyes ye body of
Mary Goose wife to
Isaac Goose; aged 42
years deceased October ye 19th 1690
here lyes also susana
goose ye 3rd aged 15 mo
died ye ?? 1667
However, this is not what everyone accepts to be the truth.
There are sources who claim that there are many Mothers Goose, just as there are sources who will claim that there were many Shakespeares.
Some suppose that Mother Goose is synonymous for the village witch…
Old Mother Goose
When she wanted to wander
Would fly through the air
On a very fine gander.Mother Goose had a house;
It stood in the wood
Where an owl at the door
As sentinel stood.
Whomever she was or wasn’t, the nursery rhymes which have been attributed to her have survived many centuries. They ring with the familiarity of archetypes and dreams that we all share.
You can read six different complete versions of the original Mother Goose books online.
Here is one of my favorites…
There was an old woman tossed up in a blanket, Seventy times as high as the moon :
Where she was going, I couldn’t but ask it, For in her hand she carried a broom.
” Old woman, old woman, old woman,” quoth I, ” Oh ! whither, oh ! whither, oh ! whither, so high ? ” “To brush the cobwebs off the sky! And I will be back again by and by.”
Do you have a favorite?
This post showed up in the random list when I popped in this morning… all I can say is WOW! That is quite the gravestone and how uncanny that I got to see it (after my long WW comment on Wednesday). It contains a truly Puritanical death head. The book on gravestone symbols I have featured something very similar and discussed the transition from skulls to faces over the years. The fruit that goes down the sides of marker really made me smile. They look like boobs and bellies, pregnant bellies actually, complete with belly buttons. I wonder what the elders would have thought of that observation.
I would love to be able to visit a cemetery that has been around as long as that one has been. Our oldest cemeteries date to the Victorian era. “Never say never”… perhaps one day I’ll be able to wander some really old cemeteries and see a death head for myself. In the meantime, I’ll enjoy your pictures.