Question I posted, just now, to Mudcat.org (and I might as well post here, too)::

[capri0mni]

Folklore: Queen Bertha Broadfoot: M. Goose?

For my blog: Plato's Nightmare / Aesop's Dream (Discovering images of disability in folklore and classics of literature), I'm considering writing an entry on the image of the disabled story-teller as a recurring motif in stories, themselves -- stories about storytelling.

I have seen mention in several places that the "original Mother Goose" was Bertha Broadfoot, or, in Latin: Regina pede aucae (The Queen with the Goose-foot), the Eighth Century Queen of the Franks.

I find this excruciatingly tantalizing, because of my emerging theory about the role of "monsters" as living omens, and how "monsters" were originally those born with deformed or missing limbs (and also as creatures who were "mixes" of different animals in one). The problem is, all the references I can find lead back to the same Wikipedia article, which is both a stub, and lacking in references.

So I was hoping someone here on Mudcat could point me to more fleshed-out legends of the queen, and how she became linked to "Mother Goose."

Whether or not there is any historical basis for the legend, or whether the figure of fairy tale and nursery rhyme could ever be attached to a living woman is unimportant to me. What I'm after is the role she's played in the imaginations of people through the centuries.

Help?

Comments

[spiralsheep]

I assume there's no connection but: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perchta

Storytelling/singing has often been associated with blindness in Europe and Asia, e.g. supposedly Homer. I've often wondered if it was considered a fittingly sedentary occupation for a handicapped person and/or whether there was a symbolic element (and if both then chicken or egg first?*).

* The answer to this question is ALWAYS that chickens and chicken eggs evolved simultaneously, OBV. ;-)

[capri0mni]

Well, yes, there's the "Lots of people with this condition do this work, because it's work that people with this condition can do." (That's the argument I make with recurrent motif of lame smiths -- unlike plowing, or keeping up with the army, or raiding the neighboring tribes' cowsheds, you can do it sitting down).

But what struck me, when I first started looking up Aesop, is that he wasn't blind, but deformed, in the traditional sense of "monster" -- he had a severe hunchback, an ugly face, and was actually mute until he was blessed by the Goddess Isis -- but still had a logical mind, and figured out how to communicate what he knew (which is why his first owner gave him his freedom -- having this mute slave was no promise that the scandalous things he was up to would remain secret.).

With "Queen Bertha," one legend said she had one human foot, and one goose's foot -- which fits the definition of "monster" as a mix of creatures. Another legend says she gave birth to a boy with a goose's head -- again, deformed child and mix of creatures (microcephaly?).

The modern literary figure "La Mere Oie" can't be traced back any further than the 1600s (she may be there, she just can't be traced beyond that), so the legend placing her 900 years earlier in history is a clue (to my fermenting brain), that her existence has symbolical and magical meaning -- that she and Aesop are both embodiments of "signs" or "portents" from the gods -- unlike Homer, who was blind, but by reputation told history, not wonder tales.

(And actually, I do think there's a connection between Perchta and Mother Goose... But it's far older, and in that role she's not a storyteller).

*Yes, though on micro-time scale, my aide points out that the chicken hen always comes first -- if all you have is a single egg in your hand, you know a hen was in its recent past. But there's a 50/50 chance that a rooster will hatch out of it, so you don't know if you'll get another egg from this one.