t, was the work of Oliver Goldsmith, who was
for some years in Newbery's employ. However that may be, it is certain
that from this date the name of Mother Goose has been almost exclusively
associated with nursery rhymes.

Newbery's _Mother Goose's Melody_ was soon reprinted by Isaiah Thomas,
of Worcester, Massachusetts, and thus came into the hands of American
children early in our national life. A long-since exploded theory was
advanced about 1870 that Mother Goose was a real woman of Boston in the
early eighteenth century, whose rhymes were published by her son-in-law,
Thomas Fleet, in 1719. But no one has identified any such publication
and there is no evidence whatever that this old lady in cap and
spectacles is other than purely mythical.

_Whence came the jingles themselves?_ It is certain that many nursery
rhymes are both widespread geographically in distribution and of great
antiquity. Halliwell and others have found references to some of them in
old books which prove that many of the English rhymes go back several
centuries. They are of popular origin; that is, they took root
anonymously among the folk and were passed on by word of mouth. When a
rhyme can be traced to any known authority we generally find that the
folk have extracted what pleased, have forgotten or modified any
original historical or other application the rhymes may have possessed,
and in general have shaped the rhyme to popular taste. "Thus our old
nursery rhymes," says Andrew Lang, "are smooth stones from the book of
time, worn round by constant friction of tongues long silent. We cannot
hope to make new nursery rhymes, any more than we can write new fairy
tales."

Here are a few illustrations of what scholars have been able to tell us
of the sources of the rhymes: "Jack and Jill" preserves the Icelandic
myth of two children caught up into the moon, where they can still be
seen carrying a bucket on a pole between them. "Three Blind Mice" is
traced to an old book called _Deuteromalia_ (1609). "Little Jack Horner"
is all that is left of an extended chapbook story, _The Pleasant History
of Jack Horner, Containing His Witty Tricks_, etc. "Poor Old Robinson
Crusoe" is a fragment from a song by the character Jerry Sneak in
Foote's _Mayor of Garratt_ (1763). "Simple Simon" gives all that the
nursery has preserved of a long chapbook verse story. "A Swarm of Bees
in May" was found by Halliwell quoted in Miege's _Great French
Dictionary_ (1687). The