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The Story and Origins of Mother Goose - mothergoose.com (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08) |
 | | If there were an actual mother goose, she might well have been an 8th Century noblewoman named Bertrada II of Laon who, in 740, married Pepin the Short, King of the Franks, and in 742 bore his son Charles, immortalized as Charlemagne, the de facto founder of the Holy Roman Empire. |
 | | Bertrada, who was a patroness of children and provided her over-achieving son his only education, was known as Berte aux grand pied, or Bertha Greatfoot, or Queen Goosefoot. |
 | | Whatever Bertrada's role, by the mid-17th Century a mythical Mother Goose--mère l'oye--was widely acknowledged by French peasants and nobility alike as a fairy birdmother who told charming tales to children. |
| www.mothergoose.com /History/mgStory.htm (379 words) |
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