Mother Goose has been around longer than my childhood memories of sing-songy nursery rhymes, and my grandmother's and her grandmother's and so on. From a Paleolithic bird goddess to Aphrodite with a swan to an old crone with a pointy hat who flies past the moon, Mother Goose has entertained children and trained parents with rhyming tales of everyday life made magical and bawdy and sometimes, a little spooky. I'll never get to the bottom of all the mysteries of Mother Goose (Was she Shakespeare's peer? Was she provoked by Cotton Mather's maudlin morality tales for children and Salem witch hunt? Was she the mother of Charlemagne? Were her first rhymes bird calls repeated by humans until they became language?)
Marija Gimbutas writes of early goddess figurines, or perhaps children's playthings, found in ancient European archeological sites. Some of these figures resemble bird-women. I recommend this book if you'd like to begin at the beginning...
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