Goosey Goosey Gander
Goosey goosey gander,
Whither shall I wander?
Upstairs and downstairs
And in my lady’s chamber.
There I met an old man
Who wouldn’t say his prayers,
So I took him by his left leg
And threw him down the stairs.
Where the rhyme comes from
The earliest known printing of Goosey Goosey Gander is in Gammer Gurton’s Garland, or The Nursery Parnassus, published in London in 1784. That early text is a little plainer than the version sung today — “Up stairs and down stairs, / In my lady’s chamber” — and it carries no tune, no picture and no explanation. Like most rhymes gathered into those first collections, it had almost certainly been passed around by word of mouth for some time before anyone thought to write it down.
The rhyme is catalogued as number 6488 in the Roud Folk Song Index. Its opening lines look very much like an older wandering-and-answering game, and the second half — the old man and the staircase — may well have been a separate scrap of verse that drifted into it, which is how a great many nursery rhymes acquired their odd, abrupt endings.
What does it mean?
The most repeated explanation is a dark one, and it deserves an honest health warning: no evidence connects the rhyme to any of these events, and all of it was proposed long after 1784.
Priest holes. A popular theory holds that the rhyme remembers the searching of Catholic households during and after the English Reformation, when priests hid in concealed “priest holes” built behind panelling and beneath floors. On this reading, the gander is a search party going “upstairs and downstairs”, and the old man who “wouldn’t say his prayers” is a priest who would not recite them in English. It is a vivid story, but it is folklore about a rhyme rather than documented history.
Slang and soldiers. The writer Chris Roberts has suggested that “left leg” was once slang for a Catholic, and that “goosey” nods at the goose-step of marching soldiers. Both suggestions are speculative, and the goose-step itself is generally dated far too late for the rhyme.
The simplest reading. Most folklorists are content with something plainer: a nonsense rhyme built on a wandering bird, a good rhyme-pair in gander and wander, and the cheerful cruelty that children’s verse has always enjoyed.
Sharing it with children
This is a splendid rhyme for stairs and staircases, real or imaginary. Walk two fingers up a child’s arm for “upstairs” and back down for “downstairs”, then give a tiny tickle at “my lady’s chamber”. On a knee, bounce steadily through the first verse and tip gently sideways at the last line. Older children like waddling round the room as the gander and choosing a new place to wander to each time — in the garden, in the kitchen, in the cupboard — which turns the rhyme into a simple, endlessly repeatable game about prepositions and places.
Extra verses to sing
These verses aren’t traditional — they’re ours. Sing them if you would rather the old man landed softly.
Goosey goosey gander,
Where else shall I roam?
Out through the orchard
And down the lane for home.
There I found the old man
A-sitting on the stair,
So I brought him bread and honey
And we said a little prayer.