Old Mother Goose con Chile Verde
Prologue, Part II: Mother Goose becomes the Old Mother Hubbard
Due to the popularity of the purported nursery rhymes composed by the historical Mother Goose, she soon had other pieces that were attributed to her that were not of her composition. This was due mainly to a writer named Charles Perrault, who had popularized her work in France by spearheading the new literary genre called “the fairytale.”
Another writer that promoted the pieces was written in French by Jean de la Fontaine, who took ancient tales from Aesop and gave them a philosophical twist. The Brothers Grimm also jumped on the bandwagon. Soon people began to give Mother Goose credit for these, too. With the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in 1440, it was becoming easier to circulate this work.
The rumor that a queen had written the works soon had her getting credit for other poems, written in English. Mother Goose entered literature as two other characters: The first was Old Mother Hubbard. “Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard to get her poor dog a bone. But when she got there, the cupboard was bare and so the poor dog had none. She went to the baker’s to buy him some bread; and when she came back, the poor dog was dead. She went to the joiner’s to buy him a coffin; and when she came back, the doggy was laughin.’ She went to the butcher’s to buy him some tripe; and when she came back, he was smoking his pipe.”
The queen in this case was Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach, wife of King George II who had borne him eight children. Other historians considered the possibility that the “old woman” was King George himself because the fashionable king would wear a powdered wig, causing some of his subjects to refer to him as “the old woman.”
The second bit of doggerel refers to a woman in a shoe: “There was an old woman who lived in a shoe. She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do. She gave them some broth without any bread. She whipped them all soundly and put them to bed.”
In this case, the “many children” were the members of Parliament and “the bed” was the House of Parliament. In Parliament, “the whip” was the parliamentarian
who kept order.
The problem with this genre of “fairytale literature” is that nothing can be taken literally. There is always a deeper and hidden meaning to it. It was a means for commoners to criticize the king or the clergy without their knowing anything about it. Sometimes the bits of humorous verse were produced in the form of riddles. Nursery rhymes were almost certainly the first full sentences that used to be memorized by children. For them, it stimulated their imaginations and fantasy lives. For adults, it was a means of getting even with those in political power. Michelangelo himself wrote a caustic verse referring to Pope Julian II as his “personal Medusa.”
Consider the following bit of folk verse in New Mexico: “How can a man of the cloth, in the service of God verily, be wedded to both daughter and Mother, though virgins both they be?” This doggerel composed by sheepherders refers of course to Fr. Antonio Juan Martínez of Taos, the priest who first married a daughter of the Church and when he was widowed, he married a Holy Mother of the Church.
Doggerel is a literary form written in uneven verse cloaked in humor. Consider this bit of French verse and see if you recognize it in another language: “Hompté Dompté assis sur un mur. Hompté Dompté en tomba très dur. Ni les chevaux ni les hommes du roi, n’ont pu recoller ce gran maladroit.” (We shall give you the answer next week).