Who was the "first" Mother Goose?
One theory is that Mother Goose was Charlamagne's mother, Queen Bertha of France, who died in 783. Bertha was supposedly called "Goose Footed Bertha" because her feet reminded her subjects of those of a goose. She is portrayed in French legends sitting at a spinning wheel telling stories to children as she spun.
America claims that Mother Goose was Elisabeth Goose of Boston and Charleston.The former Elizabeth Foster married Isaac Goose who already had ten children. Together they had six more.
I'm sure in the course of raising 16 children, Mrs. Goose often felt like the "old woman who lived in a shoe, who had so many children she didn't know what to do", but whether she was ever called "Mother Goose" by anyone outside her own family is doubtful. Supposedly, one of her sons-in-law published a small volume of rhymes in her name, but the book,if it ever existed, has long since disappeared.
