“Little Boy Blue, 
Come Blow Your Horn,
The sheep’s in the meadow,
The cow’s in the corn.
Where is the boy
Who looks after the sheep?
He’s under a haycock
Fast asleep.
Will you wake him?
No, not I,
For if I do,
He’s sure to cry.
Source: Yahoo image 4.28.16
Sorry for the delay. It’s good to be with you again. Ready to go back to our first memories of stories? Most of us, washed and brushed and in pajamas, were soothed to sleep by mothers and fathers and Mother Goose. And as we go back in time to visit our memory, let’s stay there to hear a bit of history.
The earliest reference to Mother Goose was in 1650 by Jean Loret, a French critic who wrote a monthly periodical. In 1729, Charles Perrault published eight French folk tales including Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella. His collection references “Tales of Mother Goose.” Some historians believe Mother Goose was a composite of several authors, both men and women, who handled down stories to generations. John Newbery’s book, “Mother Goose Melody or Sonnets for the Cradle” published translations of Perrault’s folk takes in 1765, according to the Today I Found Out website.
Here, we listen to rhyme, both whimsical
“Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man,
Bake me a cake as fast as you can;
Pat it and prick it, and mark it with a T,
Put it in the oven for Tommy and me.”
“Hey, diddle, diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon;
The little dog laughed,
To see such sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.”
And dark
The Queen of Hearts,
She made some tarts,
All on a summer’s day;
The Knave of Hearts
He stole those tarts
And took them clean away.
The King of Hearts
Called for the tarts,
And beat the knave full sore;
The Knave of Hearts
Brought back the tarts,
And vowed he’d steal no more.”
“Goosey, goosey gander,
Whither shall I wander?
Upstairs and downstairs
And in my lady’s chamber.
There I met an old man
Who would not say his prayers,
I took him by the left leg
And threw him down the stairs.”
Source: Anthology of Children’s Literature, 1970, Houghton Mifflin Company
And where there is rhyme, there is memory, stored in our minds and hearts.
Mother Goose, created centuries ago by unnamed people, is the symbol of the story teller. Her tiny poems are music to our ears and a child’s first verse.
These famous rhymes are humor and sadness; nonsense and reality; imagination and purpose. They teach and they soothe. Centuries later, new generations of children still sing and say them!
So,
“Star light, star bright
First star I see tonight,
I wish I may I wish I might
Have the wish I wish tonight.”
Sweet dreams.
maryann muller 