Illustration |

The Assembled Mother Goose

Mary Li

See it On Campus: Level 2

Full book available to read at: Illustrator's Book Cave & Library Reading Room

Photo of three framed artworks: (from left to right) The Eight Bald Heads, Lizzie Borden, My Mother She Killed Me

ARTIST STATEMENT

Collage is a form of art ranging from avant-garde movements to crafting hobbies to children’s picture books, and more. Inspired by the duality of seriousness behind the simplistic front of nursery rhymes and fairytales, I wanted to explore using collage as a medium to compose information into visuals. The Assembled Mother Goose is a research project that includes illustrations and writings to give background of selected nursery rhymes.

A collaged goose that has rabbit ears, blue bird wings, rat tail, and wearing a patterned scarf and boots

My melodies will never die
While nurses sing
And babies cry
_{— “Hear What Ma’am Goose says”, The Only True Mother Goose Rhymes, 1833}

INTRODUCTION

Cover of "The Assembled Mother Goose". A goose wearing a patterned head scarf stands in the middle of the cover, head peaking in front of a frame that has the title written on there. Three little mice are standing on the bottom part of the frame.

Nursery rhymes, fairy tales, those genres we associate with early childhood today had not always been targeted specifically for children. Many of those poems and stories are edited to suit the age range. Once people realized the original versions of those tales are not as innocent as they seem, people started calling them “dark fairy tales” and “horror nursery rhymes.” Some go as far as treating them like urban legends or mysterious conspiracies. In fact, many of the rhymes are closely tied to their historical contexts, passed down by oral tradition before printed on page.

Mother Goose is often credited for many of the “creepy nursery rhymes”. To add another layer of mystery, no one knows the identity of the real Mother Goose. The name has become an alias for anonymously written nursery rhymes. With new works attributed to her continuously, Mother Goose’s collection continues to grow, becoming an assemblage of different authors, culture, and time periods. In this book, I selected a few works attributed to Mother Goose that were not in the early published versions of the Mother Goose Melodies to explore their origin.

CONTENT

Illustration of Lizzie Borden. Lizzie is wearing a black hat and dress, handcuffed, holding an bloodied axe, standing in front of a dark green wall, with yellow tapes saying "keep out" in front. Text on her hat says "not guilty"; a map is on her dress showing the location of the crime scene, with the pin upside down, like a blood drop. There are newspaper cutouts and photos on the wall, featuring the trail, crime scenes, and photos of Lizzie's parents with their faces smudged. Writings on photos include: House: "such unhappy home", body of Abby: "Not mom", body of Andrew: "Dad".

LIZZIE BORDEN

Lizzie Borden took an axe
She gave her mother forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done
She gave her father forty-one.

THE UNTIDY MAN

There was a man, a very untidy man,
Whose fingers could nowhere to be found
to put in his tomb.
He had rolled his head
far underneath the bed:
He had left legs and arms
lying all over the room.

Illustration of "The Untidy Man." A silhouette of a person wearing soldier uniform is lying on the bed. A head hides under the bed on the wooden floor. Legs and arms of Robert Graves frame the image, dripping blood. Scenes of war and graves are overlayed in the blood spots. Missals and planes are seen in the sky outside of a small window.

Illustration of "My Mother, She Killed Me." The image is divided in half. The top half features a big juniper tree with silhouette of a man and woman sitting at a table eating stew in front of it. There is a fireplace on their left side and a chest on the right side. Photo cutout of two hands reach down to the bottom half, showing roots of the tree and a cartoonish skeleton in front. A red apple lies beside the bones with smoke coming out from it, reaching back to the top of the image to bring out a blue bird flying in front of the tree.

MY MOTHER, SHE KILLED ME

My mother she killed me,
My father he ate me,
My sister, little Marlinchen,
Gathered together all my bones,
Tied them in a silken handkerchief,
Laid them beneath the juniper-tree,
Kywitt, kywitt, what a beautiful bird am I!

EIGHT BALD-HEADS

A bald-head is sick,
And the second’s afraid,
The third calls a doctor,
The fourth gives him aid.
By the fifth he is borne,
By the sixth he is buried,
The seventh comes crying
Because he is worried.
When asked by an eighth
Why is that he cried,
He said, “In my home
A dear bald-head died.”
“Come, bury him quickly,
I fear a great hoard
of the seeds of his spirit
Will spring from his gourd.”