While the Brothers Grimm were real people, Mother Goose is a catch-all name for the author of nursery rhymes that have been handed down, generation by generation, for hundreds of years. Charles Perrault used the term for a collection of stories published in 1695 that included both fairy tales and nursery rhymes, although at least one individual poem had been attributed to Mother Goose before then. Tracking down the inspiration for a fictional author of folk poems so far back is difficult, but extrapolating from both history and rumors of history, Mental Floss has come up with two good candidates. They were both queens, both named Bertha, and both were notorious for having large or webbed feet! There is no evidence that either actually wrote the nursery rhymes that we know and love, but they may have inspired the name and mental image of the old woman who always had a rhyme ready for every occasion.
(Image credit: Blanche Fisher Wright)
