abies (Rock-a-bye Baby,) singing games (London Bridges,) nonsense (Hey Diddle Diddle), riddles (Humpty Dumpty), counting (One, Two, Buckle my Shoe), tongue twisters (Peter Piper), verse stories (Queen of Hearts), and cumulative rhymes (House that Jack Built) (Pars. 5).According to the World Book Encyclopedia the earliest known published collection of nursery rhymes was Tommy Thumb's SongBook in 1744, but in 1697 there was a book published in France called Tales of Mother Goose. This book contained eight fairytales including Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and Sleeping Beauty. The most influential collection was Mother Goose's Melodies: or Sonnet's for the Cradle published in 1781 (616-617). More than two hundred years since the first book of rhymes was published, interest in children and fantasy is again running high. The nursery rhyme now represents the oral history of hundreds of years and how understanding the struggles of authority and occasional mischief by the common people made with moral conventions and emotional expectations as well as with language. Often anonymous, such rhymes share interesting characteristics both in content and in linguistic patterning across a huge range of cultures. The origins and purposes of many nursery rhymes have evolved over time, and many people do not realize what the original intentions of the authors were.The term "Mother Goose" had became synonymous with the phrase "nursery rhymes" in the 1700's (Sandin pars.5). No one is sure if Mother Goose was a real person or not, but there are many arguments about who she might have been. Kristin Sandin writes down the three theories about who she really was. One idea is that she was actually Queen Sheba of biblical times. Another theory is that she is Queen Bertha, the mother of the medieval military leader Charlemagne. She was nicknamed "Queen Goose-foot" because she was web footed or pigeon toed. Queen Bertha died in 783. Many people...
