515 – Mother Goose figure

Physical description:

Attractive Staffordshire figure of Mother Goose - a woman wearing a pointed hat (white with red stripes) and holding a broom, riding on a flying goose. Mid 19th century.

Museum classification:

Images of Witchcraft

Size:

170 mm tall

Information:

Original text by Cecil Williamson: 'Figure of mother goose. She was a witch - see her broom and high hat. In the west country witches make use of geese in many ways when working at their craft, for to them geese are endowed with numerous magical qualities and have played an age-old part in the domestic mythology of the western counties.'

The origin of Mother Goose is almost certainly the Central European Goddess Holda. Night-flying wild geese were believed to be Holda and her spirit companions flying through the sky. In some legends her companions were the spirits of the dead, but it was also believed that living humans could join her. Burchard of Worms, in his Corrector (c.1010), writes, “Some women claim that on certain important nights they ride on animals with a horde of demons transformed into the shape of women (including one called, according to common folly, the witch Holda).” During the witch trials of the 16th and 17th centuries a number of accused witches confessed to taking part in these excursions, specifically mentioning Holda by name. The term 'Mother Goose story' ' which seems to mean 'folktale' ' apparently originated about the same time.

Holda was a Nature Goddess, with many wild animals sacred to her. As well as taking the shape of a goose, she could appear as a beautiful young woman or a fearsome crone. She was a story-telling oracle, and also someone who tested people by setting them dangerous or misleading challenges. She is probably the prototype of many of the witch-figures who feature in fairy tales. She actually appears in one of Grimm's Fairy Tales, as Mother Holle, a mysterious old woman with magic powers who tests two young sisters, rewarding one and punishing the other.

She was said to wear a cloak made of goose-down ' which may be a reference to the shamanic practice of wearing a feather cloak to become part-bird and gain the power of spirit flight. Snow was supposed to be the down falling from her cloak (although another, perhaps more modern, version of the folklore had it that snow was Holda shaking out her goose-down quilt).

One rather charming legend tells how she was travelling through the countryside on a wagon when the axle suddenly broke. A local carpenter made her a new axle, and when Holda had gone on her way he went back into his workshop and found that all the wood-shavings had turned to gold.

The Mother Goose pantomime story is in many ways a classic example of a dark mythology transformed into a light-hearted morality tale, but the important thing is that the three crucial elements are still there: magical transformation, magical test, and magical animal.

See also 2699, 1880, 3583, 3584.

Resource:

Object

Materials:

Ceramic

Copyright ownership:

Copyright to The Museum of Witchcraft Ltd.

Original text by Cecil Williamson: 'Figure of mother goose. She was a witch - see her broom and high hat. In the west country witches make use of geese in many ways when working at their craft, for to them geese are endowed with numerous magical qualities and have played an age-old part in the domestic mythology of the western counties.'

The origin of Mother Goose is almost certainly the Central European Goddess Holda. Night-flying wild geese were believed to be Holda and her spirit companions flying through the sky. In some legends her companions were the spirits of the dead, but it was also believed that living humans could join her. Burchard of Worms, in his Corrector (c.1010), writes, “Some women claim that on certain important nights they ride on animals with a horde of demons transformed into the shape of women (including one called, according to common folly, the witch Holda).” During the witch trials of the 16th and 17th centuries a number of accused witches confessed to taking part in these excursions, specifically mentioning Holda by name. The term 'Mother Goose story' ' which seems to mean 'folktale' ' apparently originated about the same time.

Holda was a Nature Goddess, with many wild animals sacred to her. As well as taking the shape of a goose, she could appear as a beautiful young woman or a fearsome crone. She was a story-telling oracle, and also someone who tested people by setting them dangerous or misleading challenges. She is probably the prototype of many of the witch-figures who feature in fairy tales. She actually appears in one of Grimm's Fairy Tales, as Mother Holle, a mysterious old woman with magic powers who tests two young sisters, rewarding one and punishing the other.

She was said to wear a cloak made of goose-down ' which may be a reference to the shamanic practice of wearing a feather cloak to become part-bird and gain the power of spirit flight. Snow was supposed to be the down falling from her cloak (although another, perhaps more modern, version of the folklore had it that snow was Holda shaking out her goose-down quilt).

One rather charming legend tells how she was travelling through the countryside on a wagon when the axle suddenly broke. A local carpenter made her a new axle, and when Holda had gone on her way he went back into his workshop and found that all the wood-shavings had turned to gold.

The Mother Goose pantomime story is in many ways a classic example of a dark mythology transformed into a light-hearted morality tale, but the important thing is that the three crucial elements are still there: magical transformation, magical test, and magical animal.

See also 2699, 1880, 3583, 3584.