This is an article on a fairy tale character. See Mother Goose for further information (disambiguation). Mother Goose is the fictitious creator of a collection of French fairy stories and, subsequently, English nursery rhymes. She appears as a figure in a song, the opening verse of which is now commonly used as a nursery rhyme. The story of how this came to be is quite convoluted but may have been inspired by an actual person or persons unknown. Mother Goose has been popularly associated with many women named Elizabeth who lived between 1730 and 1815. However, none of these individuals was the real Mother Goose; all were fictional characters created by James &; William Bennett. The original Mother Goose was said to be from France where she worked as a cook in a country house. One day her employer went out riding and left her alone with his children. Being a good mother, she decided to make up some games to play with the kids. One of these games was "Sing me a song of sixpence", which later became the basis for today's version of "Three Blind Mice". There are also reports that she was born in England but they are not confirmed by any evidence other than history books so they are considered false rumors started by people looking for mothers named Elizabeth so they could profit from publishing books about them.