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Mother Goose   Listen
noun
Mother Goose  n.  The supposed author of a book of nursery rhymes first published as "Mother Goose's Melodies," and usually called simply "Mother Goose." The first English edition is said to have been printed in 1719 in London. The actual persons who composed the rhymes is unknown, and earlier similar rhymes in French are a likely source for some of them. Mother Goose is also used as the title of a book of Mother Goose rhymes.






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"Mother Goose" Quotes from Famous Books



... the comprehension of the laws of some of the lighter measures, no book is so instructive as Mother Goose's Melodies. That excellent lady was one of the best metrists the language ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... the tales appeared published at Paris in a volume entitled, Histoires ou Contes du Temps Passe, avec des Moralites—Contes de ma Mere l'Oye. The earliest translation into English was in a book containing French and English, Tales of Passed Times, by Mother Goose, with Morals. Written in French by M. Charles Perrault and Englished by R.S., Gent. An English translation by Mr. Samber was advertised in the English Monthly Chronicle, March, 1729. Andrew Lang, with an introduction, ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready

... Tripp's History," "The Drawing School by Master Angelo," "Poetical Flower Garden," "Tommy Trapwit's Be Merry and Wise," "Lecture upon Toys," 2 vols; "Pretty Poems for children six feet high," "The Museum," "Polite Academy," "Poetical Flower Basket," "Mother Goose's Fairy Tales," "A Spelling Dictionary, Rhetoric; Logic; Arithmetic; History; Chronology; Geography;" "Vicar of Wakefield." Most of the latter except "Vicar" formed a circle of the sciences licensed by approval of ...
— Banbury Chap Books - And Nursery Toy Book Literature • Edwin Pearson

... virtue of which Ephraim Tutt had leaped into fame. It is true that other characters famous in song and story—particularly in "Mother Goose"—have similarly owed their celebrity in whole or part to rodents, but there is, it is submitted, no other case of a mouse, as mouse per se, reported in the annals of the law, except Tutt's mouse, from Doomsday Book down ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train

... Mother Goose verse, 'Barber, barber! shave a pig. How many hairs will make a wig? Four and twenty, that's enough, give the barber a pinch of snuff.' I suppose Trouble thought maybe Snuff, the cat, had something to do with a barber, and he got Jack mixed up in it somehow. ...
— The Curlytops and Their Pets - or Uncle Toby's Strange Collection • Howard R. Garis

... fourth birthday came he had read the Bible twice through, as well as Watts's Hymns—poor child!—and when seven or eight he had shown a propensity to absorb languages much as other children absorb nursery tattle and Mother Goose rhymes. When he was fourteen, a young lady visiting the household of his tutor patronized the pretty boy by asking to see a specimen of his penmanship. The pretty boy complied readily enough, and mildly rebuked his interrogator by rapidly writing some sentences for her in fourteen languages, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... How different faces are in this particular! Some of them speak not. They are books in which not a line is written, save perhaps a date. Others are great family bibles, with all the Old and New Testament written in them. Others are Mother Goose and nursery tales;—others bad tragedies or pickle-herring farces; and others, like that of the landlady's daughter at the Star, sweet love-anthologies, and songs of the affections. It was on that account, ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... and Through the Looking-Glass. Andersen's Fairy Tales. Arabian Nights. Black Beauty. Child's History of England. Grimm's Fairy Tales. Gulliver's Travels. Helen's Babies. Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare. Mother Goose, Complete. Palmer Cox's Fairy Book. Peck's Uncle Ike and the Red-Headed Boy. Pilgrim's Progress. Robinson Crusoe. Swiss Family Robinson. Tales from Scott for Young People. Tom Brown's School ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett

... an ordinary education and his father's business. So many seeds is Nature constantly and secretly scattering, in order that one may fall upon a spot that shall foster it into a a plant. In his boyhood, he is described by his sister, Mrs. Bowyear, as studious after his kind, delighting in Mother Goose and the Seven Champions, and not partaking much in the sports usual to such an age. He had a very early inclination for the church, and the elements of that taste for ecclesiastical pomp, which distinguished him in after life, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XIII, No. 370, Saturday, May 16, 1829. • Various

... was almost going to say he laughed to see so much sport, but that little dog is in Mother Goose, if I remember rightly, and this little dog didn't laugh. He was very much frightened, and he was hurt a little, and so was Rose. So the little dog just tucked his tail in between his hind legs, and back he ran into the yard out of which he had come to see what was going on when he heard the ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Aunt Jo's • Laura Lee Hope

... could read, not so much as a kitten or a fly to play with, and nothing to do, day after day, but wander about and admire curtains and statues, and a lady like a statue,—would you not be glad to find a book you could read, even Mother Goose? At first I hardly dared to open it, for I was afraid it might be in some unknown language, and that would have been too great a disappointment; but at length I peeped in, and there was a little hymn I used to sing with my mother, and another ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child

... breach and battered Babylon to bits: she scattered To the hedges and ditches All our nursery gnomes and witches. Lob and Puck, poor frantic elves, Drag their treasures from the shelves. Jack the Giant-killer's gone, Mother Goose and Oberon, Bluebeard and King Solomon. Robin, and Red Riding Hood Take together to the wood, And Sir Galahad lies hid In a cave with Captain Kidd. None of all the magic hosts, None remain but a few ghosts Of timorous heart, to linger on Weeping ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves

... much in vogue in former times, but we are assured that to-day mothers are less conversant with these curious and droll inventions, which were once transmitted like the tales of Mother Goose. They buy playthings for their children at great expense, and allow the latter to amuse themselves all by themselves. The toy paid for and given, the child is no longer in their mind. Those mothers who have preserved the traditions ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 483, April 4, 1885 • Various

... some of the Mother Goose rhymes because the children love to meet old friends in books just as well ...
— Boy Blue and His Friends • Etta Austin Blaisdell and Mary Frances Blaisdell

... flock of five geese— two old ones and three young ones. The old ones had just passed through the molting season, and their new wing feathers were not long enough to bear them, and the young ones, though nearly full grown, had not yet learned to fly. Pete brought the mother goose and two of her children down with the shotgun, but father gander and the other youngster escaped, flapping away on the surface of the lake at a remarkable speed, and they were allowed to go with ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace

... were not aware of it at this early stage, but your mother—if you had one—was. With what fond alacrity did she hasten to your cradle-side, when some wicked little pin was trying to insinuate itself into your affections much against your inclination, and soothe you with the pleasing strains of Mother Goose. And how your eyes brightened and your little feet and hands commenced playing tag, when you heard the wonders of Mother Goose extolled in pretty verse. Ah! those were the days of romance. I will leave them now, to search for the hidden beauties of one of your childhood's ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various

... learned under eight years of age, than the simplest lessons in grammar, arithmetic, or history—unless these are confined to rules, tables, or dates, which may be most profitably committed, exactly as "Mother Goose" is. I take pains to allude to this, because I think great harm has been done of late by the axiom that a child should not learn anything ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett

... courtiers, queens and goose girls. There were jesters and princesses, old witches and fairies. Mother Goose was there. So were Jack Horner, Bo-peep, Little Boy Blue and many more of her nursery children, not to mention two fearsome giants, at least ten feet high, whose voluminous cloaks concealed figures which appeared far too tall to be true. Rapunzel trailed about on the arm of ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester

... Reverend Doctor Ayscough. And what do you suppose the reverend donkey set him to doing? Why, learning hymns, written by another reverend gentleman, Doctor Philip Doddridge. Very good religious hymns, no doubt, but not quite so attractive as Mother Goose would have been to the little fellow. After learning a few hymns and a few words in Latin, he was set to making verses in that language, when he could not read a story book without spelling half ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin

... Giddy stood staring weakly into the mirror; reeling a little with surprise and horror and unbelief and general misery. "Can this be I?" he thought, feeling like the old man of the bramble bush in the Mother Goose rhyme. A well-made and becoming nose, but not so fine looking as the original feature had been, as ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber

... baby mind as nothing else does. A proof of the worth of her songs and stories would be found if any of us should try to write better. We have brought together many familiar ones and some unfamiliar (for Mother Goose lived in many times and many lands), and have illustrated them with some new and charming ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various

... what I said: See, returned she, what a fine thing scholarship is!—I, said she, had always, from a girl, a taste for reading, though it were but in Mother Goose, and concerning the fairies [and then she took genteelly a pinch of snuff]: could but my parents have let go as fast as I pulled, I should have been a very ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... you, and you only, but the future and the past are beyond our control. Unless you know of something that is going to happen which may mar our love, your question is silly, not at all like your Mother Goose nonsense—that was dear. And as for the past, ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller

... uproar at recess. It was decidedly trying to be the object of so much school-boy wit; to hear over and over again: "Ikey, what ails your nose?"—"Can't you wear it in a sling?"—"Or put a shade over it?"—or to see on the blackboard lines adapted from Mother Goose: ...
— The Story of the Big Front Door • Mary Finley Leonard

... lived in a shoe, being of rubber, is a privileged character, and is away on a call in the female scarlet, says the nurse. It is a good thing that she was made that way, for she is very popular. So are Mother Goose and her ten companion rubber toys. The bear and the man that strike alternately a wooden anvil with a ditto hammer are scarcely less exciting to the infantile mind; but, being of wood, they are steady boarders permanently attached ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... for the crown Thomas a Tat-ta-mus took two T's A little boy went into a barn If all the world were water Jack be nimble Cur-ly locks, cur-ly locks, wilt thou be mine? Mar-ge-ry Mut-ton-pie, and John-ny Bo-peep Is John Smith with-in? Old Mother Goose One, two, buckle my shoe Jack Sprat could eat no fat See a pin and pick it up Leg over leg There was an old wo-man who liv-ed in a shoe There was an old woman We are all in the dumps Hot cross buns, hot cross ...
— Aunt Kitty's Stories • Various

... roadster. Beatrice, in talking over the child problem with Trudy, decided that if she ever had a son she, too, would develop the poker shark in him rather than the admirer of Santa Claus and the student of Mother Goose. ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley

... to show a sympathetic understanding of the soul need and respond to it accordingly. A child has no end of imagination, and feelings to correspond. It is the spirit and meaning of ideas which signify, and not their material accuracy. Rhymes and jingles and mother goose and fairy tales and Santa Claus are all founded on an understanding of this. They supply in fanciful form a very real and necessary food for the inner nature. In the same way, with this religious groping, food that will satisfy must be given in ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)

... gnomes, and the giants; and Mother Goose and her crowd. Of course a nurse or a governess or a teacher of some sort might try to explain. Wouldn't do any good, ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates

... once chew up my picture-book? He ate one of the paper leaves that had on it about Bo Peep and her sheep," said Sue. "A five-dollar bill is paper, and so was my Mother Goose book, ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Christmas Tree Cove • Laura Lee Hope

... in the chronicles of Mother Goose we are told of the intimate connection between ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton

... making: new suits for all the servants." The King was in the parlor counting out his money—to pay out for gifts of the season—and the queen was in the kitchen dealing bread and honey—to paraphrase Mother Goose. Into the stately plantation home, with its lofty white columns, its big rooms, and its great fireplaces, poured the sons and daughters, grandchildren, uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces. Assembled around the groaning board, the patriarch asked the divine blessing ...
— Historic Papers on the Causes of the Civil War • Mrs. Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... sung, that the latter sat pale and incensed, yet not daring to show her chagrin. This music was received with unbounded applause, and then a little voice piped, "The big folks have had more'n their turn; now give us a reg'lar Mother Goose." ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe

... impending penniless years acquiring a comprehension of the bond market. She said, "I wonder if she really likes Bailey?" Arnaud's energy of dismay was laughable, "What criminal folly! They haven't finished Mother Goose yet." ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer

... their days for their lost brother; the school-books which have been so often the subjects of assault and battery, that they look as if the police must know them by heart; these and still more the pictured story-books, beginning with Mother Goose (which a dear old friend of mine has just been amusing his philosophic leisure with turning most ingeniously and happily into the tongues of Virgil and Homer), will be precious mementos by and by, ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... of books is intended for all young people from one to one hundred, it opens with about eighty of the old MOTHER GOOSE RHYMES. Nothing better was ever invented to tell to little folks who are young enough for lullabies. Their rhythm, their humor, and their pith will always cause us to prize ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various

... Sykes, "Bluebeard" with Eddie Foy, "The Rogers Brothers in London," "The Rogers Brothers in Paris," "The Rogers Brothers in Ireland," "The Rogers Brothers in Panama," "The Ham Tree" with McIntyre and Heath, "Mother Goose" with Joseph Cawthorne, "Humpty-Dumpty," "The White Cat," "The Pearl and the Pumpkin," "Little of Everything" with Fay Templeton and Pete Dailey, and many other productions for the New Amsterdam Theatre ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn

... sat on the wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king's horses and all the king's men Could not set Humpty Dumpty back again. —MOTHER GOOSE. ...
— My Pet Recipes, Tried and True - Contributed by the Ladies and Friends of St. Andrew's Church, Quebec • Various

... hands in the blue crystal below, and sang little snatches of song, being light of heart and without a care in the world. They were no nursery songs that she sang, for she considered herself to have outgrown the very few Mother Goose ditties which Captain January had treasured in his mind and heart ever since his mother sang them to him, all the many years ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards

... cups at random, and drinking one after the other from the same one, they talked. A babble of lovers, a chattering of sparrows! Child's talk, worthy of Mother Goose or of Homer! With two loving hearts, go no further for poetry; with two kisses for dialogue, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... I used to think, that ever happened in Mother Goose. I might steal a pig, perhaps, like Tom the Piper's Son, but never would I do such a thing as Margery did; the dreadful picture of her nose and of that bottle in her hand made me sure of that. And yet—snore on, Margery!—I sold my plough ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp

... older poets, whose classical exactitude of form would teach him rhythm by rote, so to speak. Let him cultivate his ear for metre, even though forced to acquire it through nonsensical jingles. We believe that many a child has obtained from his "Mother Goose" a love of correct rhythm which has later helped him in serious poetical efforts. "Paid Back," a short, powerful poem by Miss von der Heide, concludes an ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... from the south or the west. A damsel knowing naught beyond the name of the gate through which she is to enter the city, and who is yet persuaded by malicious captains to take one road rather than another, sounds too much like a Mother Goose's tale. ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... as the patriarchal age of sluggish man. The blackbirds, three species of which consort together, are the noisiest of all our feathered citizens. Great companies of them—more than the famous "four-and-twenty" whom Mother Goose has immortalized—congregate in contiguous treetops and vociferate with all the clamor and confusion of a turbulent political meeting. Politics, certainly, must be the occasion of such tumultuous debates; but still, unlike ...
— Buds and Bird Voices (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Gissing went into his study, lit a pipe, and walked up and down, thinking. By and bye he wrote two letters. One was to a bookseller in the city, asking him to send (at once) one copy of Dr. Holt's book on the Care and Feeding of Children, and a well-illustrated edition of Mother Goose. The other was to Mr. Poodle, asking him to fix a date for the christening of Mr. Gissing's three small nephews, who had come to live ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley

... lucky children always had everything they needed: pretty clothes, good fires, a lovely nursery with heaps of toys, and a Mother Goose wall-paper. They had a kind and merry nursemaid, and a dog who was called James, and who was their very own. They also had a Father who was just perfect—never cross, never unjust, and always ready for a game—at least, if at any time he was NOT ready, he always had an excellent reason ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit

... you shall turn From Mother Goose to Avon's swan; From Mary's lamb to grim Khayyam, And ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps

... keys, and opened it, and had the joy of seeing everything recognized by the owner: doll by doll, cook-stove, tin dishes, small brooms, wooden animals on feet and wheels, birds of various plumage, a toy piano, a dust-pan, alphabet blocks, dog's-eared linen Mother Goose books, and the rest. Tata had been allowed to put the things away herself, and she took them out with no apparent sense of the time passed since she saw them last. In the changing life of her parents all times and places were alike to her. She began ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells

... education and Celia's was fearfully neglected," said Lawrence; "you were not brought up on fairy stories and Mother Goose. You have not needed the first, as Celia has; but Mother Goose would have given a tone to your way of thinking, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... new edition of Mother Goose's Melodies knows much more about the curious history of the Boston edition than I do. And the reader will not need, even in these lines of mine, any light on the curious question about Madam Vergoose, or her son-in-law Mr. ...
— The Only True Mother Goose Melodies • Anonymous

... a product of the astonishing genius of Frederic Thompson, creator of Luna Park, covering nearly twelve acres and packed with Thompson's whimsical conceptions of the figures of the Mother Goose Tales, Kate Greenway's children, and soldiers and giants, and the familiar toys of the Noah's Ark style-all on a gigantic scale. Japan Beautiful, a concession backed by the Japanese Government, has many interesting features, including the enormous ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... upon. To say the truth, there was not, in this retired and thoughtful nook, anything that indicated to Redclyffe that the Warden had been recently engaged in consultation of learned authorities,—or in abstract labor, whether moral, metaphysical or historic; there was a volume of translations of Mother Goose's Melodies into Greek and Latin, printed for private circulation, and with the Warden's name on the title-page; a London newspaper of the preceding day; Lillebullero, Chevy Chase, and the old political ballads; ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... this first ride of inspection that Teddy was seized by the inspiration that suggested the name of Mother Goose's heroine, and he at once bestowed it upon Octavia. The idea, supported by both a similarity of names and identity of occupations, seemed to strike him as a peculiarly happy one, and he never tired ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry

... illustrations for Little Folks and the London News. In 1879 "Under the Window" appeared, and one hundred and fifty thousand copies were sold; it was also translated into French and German. The "Birthday Book," "Mother Goose," and "Little Ann" followed and were accorded the heartiest welcome. It is said that for the above four toy books she received $40,000. Wherever they went—and they were in all civilized countries—they were applauded by artists ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement

... ten years younger, or had passed the ten with no heartrisings and sinkings wearing to the tissues of the frame and the moral fibre to boot. She'll have a fairish health, with a little occasional doctoring; taking her rank and wealth in right earnest, and shying her pen back to Mother Goose. She'll do. And, by the way, I think it's to the credit of my sagacity that I fetched Mr. Dale here fully primed, and roused the neighbourhood, which I did, and so fixed our gentleman, neat as a prodded eel on a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... think fairy tales are much prettier than Mother Goose rhymes. We're going as the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, and the Fairy Prince. Only, of course, the Sleeping Beauty will be awake for the occasion. Shall I bring up your costume when I ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells



Words linked to "Mother Goose" :   fictitious character, character, fictional character



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