Jennifer Adams, age 10, of Monroe,  La., for her question:

WHO WAS MOTHER GOOSE?

Mother Goose is a mythical, make believe character who is associated with nursery jingles and fairy tales. You'll receive three different answers from three different countries as to who Mother Goose actually was.

They'll tell you in England that Mother Goose was an old woman who sold flowers on Oxford's streets. The French say she was really Queen Bertha, patron of children, who was misshapen like the foot of a goose as a punishment for some past misdeed. In America there are those who believe she was Elizabeth Vergoose, the mother in law of a Boston printer.

The tales attributed to Mother Goose were already old when they were recorded by a French writer named Charles Perrault. For hundreds of years they had been handed down by word of mouth. Perrault's 1696 collection included "Cinderella" and "Sleeping Beauty." Perrault's book, printed in the Netherlands, was called "Histories or Stories of Past Times." A cover page added: "Mother Goose's Tales."

A collection of jingles called "Mother Goose's Melody" was published in London in 1780 and reprinted five years later in Worcester, Mass.