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• Date: 1938
• Sculptor: Frederick George Richard Roth
• Medium & size: Granite, lifesize.
• Location: Central Park near East Drive at 72nd St., at entrance to Mary Harriman Rumsey Playground

The Mother Goose stories & poems

“Mother Goose” is a woman with a past: over three hundred years of it, starting at the court of Louis XIV. In 1697, Charles Perrault published eight stories under a title that translates as Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals (Histoires ou Contes du Temps passé), subtitled Tales of Mother Goose (Les Contes de ma Mère l’Oye).

Among the tales were Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard, Puss in Boots, and Cinderella.

These fairy tales became wildly popular in France and abroad. A century later an anonymous English author – possibly Oliver Goldsmith – piggybacked on their popularity by applying the name “Mother Goose” to a collection of children’s poems and Shakespeare excerpts. The full title: Mother Goose’s Melody: or, Sonnets for the Cradle. In two parts: Part I. Contains the most celebrated Songs and Lullabies of the old British Nurses, calculated to amuse Children and to excite them to Sleep. Part II. Those of that sweet Songster and Nurse of Wit and Humour, Master William Shakespeare. Embellished with cuts and illustrated with Notes and a Maxims, Historical, Philosophical and Critical.

The only new elements in this 1791 volume were the preface and the flippant morals. For example, here’s a poem that was already well known:

Cross patch, draw the latch
Set by the fire and spin;
Take a cup and drink it up,
Then call your neighbors in.

The moral to the poem, arbitrarily attributed in Mother Goose’s Melody to the Roman author Pliny, is, “A common case this, to call in our neighbors to rejoice when all the good liquor is gone.”

Other publishers soon offered their own editions of children’s poems under the “Mother Goose” title, adding and deleting poems at will.

Mother Goose in Central Park

On Central Park’s Mother Goose sculpture, Jack Horner is the only character who appeared in the 1791 Mother Goose. Other characters on Roth’s sculpture include Humpty Dumpty, Little Bo Beep (or Mary without her Lamb?), Old King Cole, and Old Mother Hubbard.

Peace through intimidation

Here’s a gem that you won’t find in modern editions of Mother Goose rhymes. Given the name of the bogeyman, it must be about two centuries years old: England was at war with Napoleon Bonaparte from 1799 to 1815.

Baby, baby, naughty baby,
Hush, you squalling thing, I say.
Peace this moment, peace, or maybe
Bonaparte will pass this way.

Baby, baby, he's a giant,
Tall and black as Rouen steeple,
And he breakfasts, dines, rely on't,
Every day on naughty people.

Baby, baby, if he hears you
As he gallops past the house,
Limb from limb at once he'll tear you,
Just as pussy tears a mouse.

And he'll beat you, beat you, beat you,
And he'll beat you into pap,
And he'll eat you, eat you, eat you,
Every morsel snap, snap, snap.

More

• For more on Central Park (especially sculpture and architecture), see the entry in the tag cloud and my book Central Park: The Early Years.
• In Getting More Enjoyment from Sculpture You Love, I demonstrate a method for looking at sculptures in detail, in depth, and on your own. Learn to enjoy your favorite sculptures more, and find new favorites. Available on Amazon print and Kindle formats.
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