Fiction    To 14/9/1586

Mother Goose

Categories: Animals, Fictional

The interment register at St Olaves Hart Street records Mother Goose being buried on 14 September 1586. This is extremely strange so we did some digging.  The story of a goose laying golden eggs can be traced back to ancient Greece, but not the term 'Mother Goose'. From The Development of Mother Goose in Britain in the Nineteenth Century we learn that Mother Goose first appeared on stage in 1806 at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in ‘Harlequin and Mother Goose, or the Golden Egg’ in which Joseph Grimaldi also appeared.  It’s thought that the term ‘Mother Goose’ was popularised by the French ‘Mother Goose’s Rhymes’, by Perrault, published in 1697 but it existed before that.  There is a reference to the phrase in Loret's ‘La Muse Historique’ collected in 1650 and in a work by Guy de la Brosse, in 1628.  Which gets us pretty close to the St Olave’s burial year of 1598, but still doesn’t explain the entry in the register.  Oddly, there is another burial site for Mother Goose, 1690, in Boston, Massachusetts. Possibly the phrase was a perfectly acceptable name for a mother with the surname Goose. Greater minds than ours have failed to solve this one.

Comments are provided by Facebook, please ensure you are signed in here to see them

This section lists the memorials where the subject on this page is commemorated:
Mother Goose

Commemorated ati

St Olave's Church

'The Uncommerical Traveller' was the name of articles that Dickens wrote for ...

Read More

Other Subjects

Davey

Davey

'Special friend Davey', who, we are guessing, was a pet.

Animal, Animals

1 memorial
Talbot dog

Talbot dog

Extinct white hunting dog.  Now mainly seen in heraldry.

Animal, Animals, History

1 memorial
Veterinary History Society
1 memorial
donkeys of Covent Garden

donkeys of Covent Garden

100,000 costermongers' donkeys worked in and around the market.  The picture source says: "In the 1860s there were as many as 2,000 donkey barrows on a Saturday morning in Covent Garden Market."

Animal, Commerce, Animals

1 memorial
Dead Parrot Sketch

Dead Parrot Sketch

One of the most famous of the sketches in the television comedy series 'Monty Python's Flying Circus'. Written by Graham Chapman and John Cleese, and performed by Cleese and Michael Palin. Initiall...

Fiction, Animals, Humour, Seriously Famous, TV & Radio

1 memorial

Previously viewed

Private G. Howard

Private G. Howard

HMS Terrible, Royal Marine Light Infantry, China

Person

War dead, Other war
1 memorial
6 Burlington Gardens - Hume

6 Burlington Gardens - Hume

W1, Burlington Gardens, 6

There are 22 statues on the façade of this building. Each is labelled with his (always 'his') surname. There are 12 at the top up against...

1 subject commemorated, 1 creator
Ernie Wise OBE

Ernie Wise OBE

Comedian, one half of Morecambe and Wise.  Born Leeds. Died Nuffield Hospital, Gerrards Cross.  The little one on the right in our picture.

Person, Humour, TV & Radio

3 memorials