- A Fairy Tale - How To Profit From Your Mother-in-law!
- ". . . The tale of Mother Goose in myth and fable abounds, It quite bewilders and confounds.""
- -From An Old French Poem
- Once upon a time, there lived on Pudding Lane a poor printer. He overheard Old Mother Goose telling nursery stories to his son. Since there was very little printing business, he printed and sold some of the stories, became wealthy and lived happily ever after!
- With the possible exception of the traditional ending, the above is true. Thomas Fleet was a printer, book seller, and newspaper publisher in Boston in 1715. He did have a shop and home on Pudding Lane. Records show that the famous colonial preacher, Cotton Mather, preformed a marriage ceremony wedding Fleet to Miss Elizabeth Goose.
- The Fleet's lived adjacent to the Pudding Lane shop. One of Thomas Fleet's endeavors was to publish The Boston Evening Post. The publication must not have been very profitable, because, on at least one occasion, the publisher made an appeal to his subscribers to pay up. He used a Bible scripture to back up his demand. "Romans 13, . . . Owe to no man any thing. . ."
- Fleet really needed the money. Elizabeth had given birth to a son, and her mother, "Old Mother Goose," moved in as well. With four mouths to feed, he set about to do more job printing and to print additional books to sell.
- He heard the songs and rhymes Mrs. Goose sang to her grandson and collected them into a small book. The booklet,"Songs for the Nursery or Mother Goose's Melodies," sold for two coppers. There does not exist a surviving copy of the original book, but in 1833, Boston publishers, Munroe & Frances, reprinted, what they said was, the booklet "with a long-neck goose on the cover."
- The French would dispute the claim of an original American Mother Goose. In 1697, Charles Perrault collected some well known fairy tales into a volume. He called the book, Contes de ma Mere, l'Oye or Tales of My Mother, the Goose. The frontispiece of the book had an old woman telling stories to a man, children and a cat.
- Perrault's book was very popular and was later translated into English and published in 1760 by John Newbury. In 1785, almost an exact copy of Newbury's book was reprinted in Massachusetts by Isaiah Thomas. By coincidence, Isaiah Thomas married one of the grand-daughters of Thomas Fleet and the great grand-daughter of Old Mother Goose.
- Thomas Fleet's mother-in-law's grave is in Boston. She was, of course, Mother Goose, but was she the one and only? There is no other single person who could lay claim to the title. However, an ancient expression when telling a story or spinning a fantastic tale, was to say "A little bird told me." or "A goose told me." It is possible that the origin of children's most popular story teller came from a printer, but perhaps the origin is one that is more universal and belongs to all people.
Copyright (C) 1997 by Frank Granger
Table of Contents
