The Linguistic and Historical Value of Mother Goose.
- Laura Adrienne
- Jan 4
- 7 min read
The moniker Mother Goose has been applied to a number of different story tellers since the 8th century. But the first proven printing of Mother Goose can be attributed to Charles Perrault. In 1697, Charles Perrault published a collection of folktales with the subtitle “Contes de ma mère l’oye” (Tales from my Mother Goose). These stories became popular in the United States in 1729 and England in 1765 when John Newbery published “Mother Goose’s Melody,” or “Sonnets for the Cradle.” This publication switched the focus of Mother Goose from tales to rhymes.
Nursery rhymes are simple little ditties which have existed in oral tradition long before the invention of the printed page. Through the years and from region to region the words have changed but the literary elements remain. Since preprinted times, Mother Goose Rhymes have transformed, not only from their original purpose of amusing and entertaining, but linguistically to teach language to children. Thus reinterpretation has changed the form of the original nursery rhyme to fit the current age. While so many Mother Goose rhymes could be used to show examples of literary elements, of particular interest are “Hickory, dickory, dock,” “Baa, baa, black sheep,” Mary, Mary, quite contrary,” and “Pop goes the weasel.” These rhymes now used to teach language to children because of their rich linguistic elements of alliteration, rhyme, repetition, and onomatopoeia, once entertained with tales of historical events full of imagery and symbolism.
Nursery rhymes are useful in language acquisition of children due to their easy to remember simple structure and words. Their simplicity creates the ability to set the rhyme to a tune and be used for play, thus enhancing a child’s ability to remember and repeat. These rhymes are full of alliteration, rhyme, repetition, and onomatopoeia.
Alliteration is “deeply significant for the history and cultural continuity of medieval English literature” (Lightsey 37). Alliteration is the occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words. In “Baa, baa, black sheep,” the “b” sound is the alliterative consonant. However, as Lightsey further states, after 1066, the influx of the Romance languages “displaced the native alliterative verse” (37) and the focus became more that of rhyme.
There are several variations of rhyme. End-rhyme is the identity of the sounds at the end of a line, such as in;
Hickory, dickory, dock,
The mouse ran up the clock.
This is also an example of perfect rhyme in which the stressed vowels and any succeeding consonants are identical. A common pattern for English speakers is the use of the
schwa vowel on unstressed central vowels. Thus “Simon” and “pie-man” could be considered perfect rhymes although the spellings are not the same.Imperfect rhyme are not phonetically identical, but flow in rhythmic fashion as in “dame” and “lane”. It is interesting to note that spelling pronunciation has an impact on imperfect rhyme. Looking at Little Jack Nory this is evident in the rhyme of “switches” with “breeches.” Mother Goose often uses spelling pronunciation to create rhyme based on common English-speaking customs. For instance, dialectically, it is not uncommon for people to replace the double “e” sound with /I/, as in creek pronounced as “crick”. Therefore, “switches” rhymes with “breeches” if it is pronounced as “britches.”
Another type of rhyme is the internal rhyme where the last words of a line may not rhyme, but the rhyme is found within the line, such as;
Mary, Mary, quite contrary
How does your garden grow?
Internal rhyme can also be seen in the first line of “Jack and Jill.”
Jack and Jill went up a hill
To fetch a pail of water.
In anaphora and epistrophe, words are repeated in the beginning or the end of the rhyme respectively. Examples of this rhetorical device are common in nursery rhymes. “Hickory dickory dock” begins and ends with the same line;
Hickory, dickory, dock,
The mouse ran up the clock;
The clock struck one,
And down he run,
Hickory, dickory, dock.
“Baa, baa, black sheep” repeats the beginning of lines 5 and 6 with “And one for the.” And “Pop goes the weasel,” repeats words and phrases in almost every verse.
Round and round the cobbler’s bench
The monkey chased the weasel
The monkey thought ‘twas all in fun
Pop! Goes the weasel.
A penny for a spool of thread
A penny for a needle,
That’s the way the money goes,
Pop! Goes the weasel.
A half a pound of tuppeny rice,
A half a pound of treacle.
Mix it up and make it nice,
Pop! Goes the weasel.
Anaphora and epistrophe therefore create a varying rhythm scheme of internal rhyme.
Repetition creates familiarity and can be used to create comfort for learning through play. Thus the simple rhythmic semantics of nursery rhymes are perfect for engaging young minds. Although hickory and dickory are nonsense words, their use at the beginning and ending of each verse creates an easy to remember rhyme which enforces the meaningful lines in between. The same principle can be applied to “Pop goes the weasel.” The repetition of “monkey,” “penny,” and “half a pound” create easy recall ability.
Onomatopoeia is a sound metaphor of language with the function of “imitate (ing) the sound it represents” (Collins 407). For instance in “Baa, baa, black sheep,” “baa” is the sound a sheep makes. Animal sounds are the most common nursery rhyme form of onomatopoeia. However, it also includes expressions of movement, such as “pop” in “Pop goes the weasel,” exclamations, as in “whee!” and object sounds as in “choo-choo” or “tick-tock.”
Through reinterpretation, nursery rhymes have changed from original verse to more current versions. This happens repeatedly over time, often due to societal or political influences. However, since many rhymes have been adapted from foreign roots, reinterpretation often occurs when the original translated language produces words that are unfamiliar to the translated version. This manipulation of original nursery rhymes to their more common forms fulfills many purposes. For one, it makes uncommon language common, such as the change from “Pease porridge hot” to “Peas Porridge.” This example is referred to as back formation, where a new word is formed from an older word which is assumed to be a derivative of it (Agleo & Butcher 264). Another example of reinterpretation can be found in “Hickory, dickory, dock” which wasoriginally titled “Hickere, Dickere Dock” (Tom Thumb’s pretty Song Book). Borrowing, as it implies, is the adaptation of English words based on foreign words. To make sense of some English translations, we have to look back to similarities in other languages. For instance, Iona and Peter Opie the famous folklorists, contend that hickory, dickory, dock is based on the Celtic counting numbers; hevera (8), devera (9), and dick (10). While historians believe that the nursery rhyme may have been about Richard Cromwell a.k.a. Tumbledown Dick, who spent only 9 months as Lord Protector of Britain in 1658 (“Hickory, dickory, dock”), the Opie’s idea is more fitting with current times and the use of Hickory, dickory, doc as a child’s counting rhyme. Although there is no evidence of more than one original verse pertaining to counting, there has since been a longer version including different animals and counting numbers.
As with “Hickory dickory dock,” most Mother Goose rhymes have their roots in history. What is now used as a counting rhyme may once have been a story about England’s politics. Literary Historians have traced possible beginnings of many such rhymes, often finding their intended purpose was not to teach language acquisition, but as a means to spread news to a highly illiterate populous. Since many of these rhymes predate the published word, origins remain speculation and often have several possible interpretations.
“Mary, Mary, quite contrary,” seems to be about a young maiden tending to her garden. But historians speculate that it is actually a tale about Mary I, daughter of King Henry VIII, who
ruled England for only 5 short years. During this time, she fought to bring Catholicism back as the ruling religion of England. She earned the moniker “Bloody Mary” by executing Protestants. It is believed that the line “Pretty maids all in a row” refers to hundreds of protestant women being burned on stakes.
“Baa, Baa Black Sheep,” dates back to the 13th century when King Edward the 1st imposed a large tax on wool. One third of the wool was given to the King, one third went to the Church, and only one third was kept by the farmers. There is a long forgotten ending to the rhyme which states “But none for the little boy / Who cries down the lane” (Dark and Disturbing Origins). However, this little ditty has been reinterpreted to reference black slaves picking cotton. In an article titled, “Is this the moment the world officially went mad?” Sally Lee, a writer for Australia’s Daily Mail website, reported that kindergarten teachers in one school district banned the rhyme for being racist and sexist.
“Pop goes the weasel” may not be as politically motivated, but it too has historic significance as well as a rich linguistic quality. London’s Cockney Rhyming slang sought to create a language unknown to outsiders. Thus a word such as “stairs” could be transformed to “apples and pears.” “Pop” is slang for pawn. “Weasel” is created from “weasel and stoat” translating to “coat.” The “Eagle” referenced in the rhyme refers to an old pub. “Tuppeny rice” and “treacle” are two pennies worth (1 pound) of rice, and a sweet syrup, respectively, used to create a rice pudding. The poem is really about drinking in a pub until all your money is gone and then pawning your coat to buy food.
Regardless of their intended purpose of entertaining, or their amended purpose of teaching, these rhymes remain full of linguistic elements and symbolic imagery which may explain why they have existed popularly for several hundred years.
Works Citated:
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