Goosey Goosey Gander

"Goosey Goosey Gander"
Roud #6488
Song
Written England
Published 1784
Form Nursery rhyme
Writer Traditional
Language English

"Goosey Goosey Gander" is an English-language nursery rhyme. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 6488.

Lyrics

The most common modern version of the lyrics is:

Goosey goosey gander,
Whither shall I wander?
Upstairs and downstairs
And in my lady's chamber.
There I met an old man
Who wouldn't say his prayers,
So I took him by his left leg
And threw him down the stairs.[1]

  1. ^ I. Opie and P. Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), pp. 191–2.

Alternative versions

The earliest recorded version of this rhyme is in Gammer Gurton's Garland or The Nursery Parnassus published in London in 1784. Like most early versions of the rhyme it does not include the last four lines:

Goose-a goose-a gander,
Where shall I wander?
Up stairs and down stairs,
In my lady's chamber;
There you'll find a cup of sack
And a race of ginger.[1]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Opie1997 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

Some versions have the additional concluding lines:

The stairs went crack,
He nearly broke his back.
And all the little ducks went,
'Quack, quack, quack'.[1]

  1. ^ Kear, Janet (2010). Man and Wildfowl. T & AD Poyser Ltd. ISBN 978-1-4081-3762-8. Retrieved 2012-01-13. 

Iona and Peter Opie note records of a separate rhyme referring to the Crane fly recorded from about 1780, which they suggest may have been amalgamated with this rhyme in the early nineteenth century:

Old father Long-Legs
Can't say his prayers:
take him by the left leg,
And throw him downstairs.[1]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Opie1997 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

Interpretation

The amateur historian Chris Roberts suggests, with no corroborating evidence, that the rhyme is linked to the propaganda campaign against the Catholic Church during the reign of King Henry VIII.[1]

Mark Cocker and Richard Mabey note in Birds Britannica that the greylag goose has for millennia been associated with fertility, that "goose" still has a sexual meaning in British culture, and that the nursery rhyme preserves these sexual overtones ("In my lady's chamber").[2]

Cultural references


Books

Television

Movies

Notes

  1. C. Roberts, Heavy words lightly thrown: the reason behind the rhyme (Granta, 2004), p. 23.
  2. Cocker, Mark; Mabey, Richard (2005). Birds Britannica. Chatto & Windus. pp. 74–76. ISBN 0-7011-6907-9.
  3. Herd, David (2005-11-12). "Attention, shoppers". The Guardian. Retrieved 2012-03-02.
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