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Songs of the Nursery; or, Mother Goose's Melodies for Children. On the title page was the picture of a goose with a very long neck and a mouth wide open, and below this,
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Printed by T. Fleet, at his Printing House in Pudding Lane, 1719. Price, two coppers.
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Fleet's book was partly a reprint of an English collection of songs, (Barclay's), and the new title was doubtless a compliment by the printer to his mother-in-law Goose for her contributions. She was the mother of sixteen children and a typical 'Old Woman who lived in a Shoe.'
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rhymes.
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Boston children at that date, says Mr. Whitmore,
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that they began to call her
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Mother Goose, in derision, the term being derived from Queen Goosefoot, the mother of Charlemagne. The old nurse paid no attention to her critics, but continued to sing her rhymes as before; for, however much grown people might laugh at her, the children seemed to enjoy them very much, and not one of them was too peevish to be quieted and soothed by her verses. At one time Mistress Gooch was nursing a child of Mr. Ronald Barclay, a physician residing in the town, and he noticed the rhymes she sang and became interested in them. In time he wrote them all down and made a book of them, which it is said was printed by John Worthington & Son in the Strand, London, in 1712, under the name of
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Ye Melodious Rhymes of Mother Goose.