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FAMOUS SONGS
maiden name was Elizabeth Foster, and she was born in Massachusetts in 1665. She mar-ried Isaac Goose when about twenty years old, and she died in 1757. Mother Goose used to sing her rhymes to her grandson; and Thomas Fleet, her brother-in-law, printed and published the first edition of her nursery rhymes, entitled, " Songs for the Nursery; or, Mother Goose's Melodies," in 1716. Now, as a variant of the lyric may be found in Pryce's " Archseologica Cornu-Britannica," issued in 1790 with a note to the effect that it was sung at Cardew in 1698 by one Chygwyn, brother-in-law to Mr. John Gross, of Penzance, it is just possible that some ancestors of Mother Goose carried the song away with them to America, and she may have partly remembered the words which are so so essentially English in tone and expression. Perhaps some of the Pilgrim Fathers, who emigrated in 1620 in the Mayflower, took away the old piece—Massachusetts, it will be remem-bered, being one of the first places colonized.
The words given in the work just referred to are as follows:
" ' Where are you going, my pretty fair maid?' said he;
* "With your pretty white face and your yellow hair ?' * I'm going to the well, sweet sir,' said she ;
* For strawberry leaves make maidens fair.' "
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