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 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 . 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.
This section lists the memorials where the subject on this page is commemorated:
Mother Goose
Commemorated ati
St Olave's Church
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Other Subjects
Charles Cruft
Dog show promoter. Worked as a travelling salesman for Spratt's. His first dog show was run in 1878 at the request of the French breeders at the Paris Exhibition. There followed some more on beh...
Royal Society for the Protection of Birds
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Bernard N. Mills
Second son of Bertram.  The picture shows him with his brother, Cyril.  We think Bernard is on the left.  Died at home in London.
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...
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